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In 1921 Lippmann was hired on Joseph Pulitzer's New York World as an editorial writer, and subsequently as editor. When the World died in 1931, Lippmann, by then author of ten books and one of the most authoritative voices of liberalism in the U.S., was invited aboard the then staunchly conservative Herald Tribune as a bylined columnist. The invitation intrigued him. "It was absolutely a new idea," he said. "It was the first time a paper had ever asked someone with opposite views to write for it."
During 27 years of association, the Herald Tribune has treated Columnist Lippmann with awe-struck respect, even going so far as to pass a typist's error in punctuation. The column, originally syndicated to twelve papers, has consistently picked up new subscribers. Today Lippmann is the most widely quoted and acclaimed pundit in the world; Pravda has reprinted at least one of his pieces verbatim; Historian James Truslow Adams solemnly declared after Lippmann joined the Trib that "what happens to Lippmann in the next decade may be of greater interest than what happens to any other single figure now on the American scene."
"Obfuscator de Luxe." Not all of his readers join in the paean of praise. Novelist James M. Cain, an associate on the World, said of him: "He may be thinking in terms quite divorced from what the American people are worrying about, which occasionally gives his work an extremely farfetched quality." The late Heywood Broun, a Harvard classmate and a World staffer, wrote wryly that Lippmann is "quite apt to score a field goal for Harvard and a touchdown for Yale in one and the same play." Liberal Lawyer Amos Pinchot gave him the title "Obfuscator de Luxe."
These thrusts are as valid as the accolades. As a columnist, writing for a potential readership of some 20 million, Lippmann has a reach far short of his grasp. His work is literate but can also be obtuse, repetitious, and obscure. The reader is expected to know all about "the long Soviet note to Berlin" and the ideology of John Maynard Keynes; Columnist Lippmann will not enlighten him. "I do not assume," he says, "that I am writing for anybody of a lower grade of intelligence than my own."
As a reporter Lippmann is by self-concession unqualified and unaspiring, consistently ignores opportunities for scoops. As an artificer of foreign policy, he locks himself in his quiet citadel, far from the diplomatic battleground where fragile theories, however finely spun, can die. As his convictions change and his errors become apparent, he abandons previous positions without apology. This can be confusing, especially to the dogged few who follow him with the patience, the tuition and the comprehension with which any serious Lippmann reader must come fully endowed.