With a trumpeting of Page One headlines, the New York Post (circ. 390,000) last week launched a series on Hearst Columnist Walter Winchell, "probably the biggest success story in American journalism." To the Post, which has been feuding with Winchell for months, it was a success story without a hero.
Post Editor James Wechsler had long been anxious to hang a picture of Winchell for his readers, but he could not find an occasion to his liking. Winchell supplied one by his attacks on Negro Singer Josephine Baker, after she complained that the Stork Club had refused to serve her (TIME, Nov. 12). When the race-conscious Post took her side, the paper heard that Stork Club Owner Sherman Billingsley had set agents to investigating Post Owner Dorothy Schiff.
The Post decided to investigate Billingsley first, then dropped him in favor of his great & good friend Winchell, because "all the trails seemed to lead to Winchell." Editor Wechsler sent a pack of seven reporters after the story. They spent two months at the job before Editor Wechsler sat down to write most of the series himself.
Faded Orchids. The Post depicted Walter Winchell as "one of the loneliest men in the world," though "he assumes that he knows everybody and everybody knows him . . . He made the gossip column a respectable newspaper feature . . . but he spends much of his time justifying the existence of gossip columns and trying to prove he is a heavier thinker than Walter Lippmann.
"He is a sucker for the most faded verbal orchid from the most cynical suitor. The worst book will get his best notices if he is favorably mentioned in it ... He feels compelled on all occasions to remind the world that he is a central figure in the history of the 20th century. 'One hundred years from now I'm the only newspaperman they'll remember,' he told a private audience ... He depicts himself as the eternal friend of the underdog ... his only requirement is that the underdog remain forever on his leash.
"In his latter-day role of statesman, he is handicapped only by misinformation, lack of knowledge, capricious judgment and a cultivated aversion for the reading of books. 'Tell me what's in it,' he demands impatiently, 'don't make me read it.' " Said the Post: he prefers to let others read, see, listen—and even write—for him. "Winchell's 'gossip' ... is primarily the edited product of diligent, harassed press-agents who give him first choice on all evil that they see, hear or overhear—and some of the good, if it involves their own clients . . . The dividends are indirect; they collect proportionately from their clients for the touch of immortality that goes with the expression: 'He's close to Winchell.'" And, added the Post, they live in unholy terror that they will lose that touch.