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It could also get more accurate. Though aggressive reporting is the "Merry-Go-Round" hallmark, the column is only slightly less well known for its sacrifice of fact to fancy when the crusading spirit is upon it. As recently as seven weeks ago, Pearson was caught with his facts in the wastebasket when he charged that President Nixon had tried to dictate a starring role for himself in the Apollo moon-flight ceremonies. Anderson's reconstruction of the tragedy at Chappaquiddick also struck many as more supposition than substance. The columnist wrote that Kennedy at first persuaded his cousin Joseph Gargan to take the blame for Mary Jo Kopechne's death, then changed his mind during the night. Anderson insists that he pried the information, thread by thread, from Kennedy intimates.
Anderson has lost none of his zeal—and none of his Boy Scout piety. "We get 200 to 300 letters a day from little people who have lost faith in the possibility of seeing justice done through the normal processes," he says. And he vows "to keep the column what Drew made it—a voice for the voiceless."