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A Heart Is a Home. Bovard's style of journalism was carried on with the same driving, unsentimental tenacity by burly, hard-boiled Managing Editor Ben Reese, who retired in 1951, and now by a milder-mannered crusader, Raymond L. Crowley, 58, a staffer for 31 years and, like both Reese and Bovard, a longtime city editor. Over the P-D's 1,650-man staff is the paper's, unchallenged boss, Joseph Pulitzer II, 68, who, like his late father, has long suffered from failing eyesight; he keeps a battery of secretaries reading the paper to him line-by-line every day (including ads). Whether in his office, at his estate in Bar Harbor, Me., or aboard his yacht Victoria, "J.P." deluges his staff with distinctive yellow-paper memos, has even edited his own obituary" for the paper's files, to say: "[Joseph Pulitzer II's] heart was more at home in the editorial sanctum than in the countinghouse."
In the tradition set by Bovard, P-D staffers, whose salaries are as high as any newspaper in the U.S., keep aloof from outside organizations, rarely accept invitations to pressagents' parties, return gifts that are sent to them, pay their way wherever they go. The PD, which in 1951 bought the ailing Star-Times (circ. 179,803) and now is the only evening paper in St. Louis, seldom loses a staffer to any other newspaper. When the flow of news is heavy the news department rules, decides how much space it will need, leaves the rest for ads. The P-D needs plenty of news space since it always fills its columns with national and international news, local stories, exposes and dispatches from its seven-man Washington bureau, headed by able Raymond ("Pete") Brandt.
Locally, the P-D's editorials have power as well as a sharp bite, often are bolstered by the talents of Daniel R. ("Fitz") Fitzpatrick, probably the most widely reprinted editorial cartoonist in the U.S. (TIME, June 22). But nationally, the P-D's unpredictable behavior makes its editorials much less a power than its crusading news columns. Readers, who now think of the paper as the unwavering voice of New and Fair Dealism, forget that in 1936 the P-D supported Landon against Roosevelt. And when F.D.R. gave 50 destroyers to Britain in the early days of World War II, the P-D screamed that he had become "America's first dictator," ran its editorial in full-page ads across the country. Nevertheless, in 1940 and 1944 it supported F.D.R. again. After backing Dewey in 1948, it reversed its field last year and supported Stevenson, has been a persistent critic of the Republican Administration ever since. However, despite its editorial broken-field running, there is no turning back or sidestepping in the P-D's journalistic traditions, which are a solidly entrenched family matter. Its continuity is assured. Vice President and associate editor of the P-D is Joseph Pulitzer III, 40, Harvard ('36). And after him, there is four-year-old Joseph Pulitzer IV, already earmarked for his family's newspaper. Says "J.P." III: "The P-D tradition is much bigger than any individual."