Distinguished Service

Besides pride and pleasure Pulitzer Prizes generally generate a good deal of professional controversy. The 1934 awards made last week at Columbia University were no exceptions. Losers made almost as much news as winners when the recommendations of special juries to pick the best novel, the best history and the best play (see p. 48), were overridden by the prize-awarding board. Only in the field of journalism did there seem to be a notable unanimity of choice. Yet no award was more astonishing than that of the $500 gold medal "for the most disinterested and meritorious public service rendered by an American Newspaper." Not the richest in cash value, this is the most coveted journalistic prize in the land. Its terms personify the traditions of the late, great Joseph Pulitzer. First won in 1918 by the New York Times for thoroughgoing coverage of the War, its roster of winners is a roll-call of important U. S. dailies. Only twice has a smalltown daily been thus honored: the Columbus (Ga.) Enquirer-Sun in 1926, the Canton (Ohio) Daily News in 1927. But the Pulitzer Prize winner for 1934 is so microscopic that most newsreaders east of the Rocky Mountains needed an atlas and an Ayer's Directory of Periodicals to identify it. It was the Medford (Ore.) Mail Tribune (circulation: 4,500). No less extraordinary than the obscurity of the winner was the fact that its achievement was conservatively defensive against a crusading opposition paper, the News. While the Mail Tribune got the Pulitzer Prize, the News's editor was serving a life sentence in prison. Nestled in the floor of Southern Oregon's lush Rogue River valley, famed for its pears and apples, Medford was a thriving, peace-loving town (pop.: 11,000), loyal to its Chamber of Commerce and American Legion, until Llewellyn A. Banks arrived from Riverside, Calif, in 1925. With him he brought his second wife, two new Cadillacs, 40 suits of custom-made clothes, and a million dollars netted from the sale of citrus orchards in Southern California. Baldish, spectacled, with high cheek bones, Banks struck Oregon like a tornado. He became the largest single owner of pear orchards in the state, bought the Medford News, boldly declared himself a candidate for the U. S. Senate against Senator Charles L. McNary, stumped the State in an automobile with California license plates. He failed to carry a single precinct, but his name carried to every Oregon ear. Soon he was buying and selling pears for other growers, paying them more than he promised, making himself the man of the hour. Through his newspaper read with the Bible by small farmers and hillbillies, he led attacks on the Farmers' Exchange Cooperative, the American Legion, State & county officers, circuit and supreme courts. When Depression hit Medford, Editor Banks found himself in hot water. The delusions of grandeur gave way to delusions of persecution. Suits for foreclosures, taxes, wages, payments of all sorts piled up until he faced bankruptcy. He even lost the News to its former owner by foreclosure. Libel suits aggregating $300,000 he staved off by charging judges with prejudice. Then Editor Banks organized a "Good Government Congress" of 5,000 or 6,000 followers, dedicated to ousting practically all State and county officials, dissolving the Bar Association, defying the courts. The "Congress" incited a boycott against the Mail Tribune as a "tool of the interests," provided Editor Banks with an armed bodyguard and a small army of minute men in the foothills, subject to his call at the signal of open revolution. Banks led a riotous march on the Court House, made a speech from the steps, would have thrown out the county officials bodily if the American Legion had not intervened. Oregon newspapers began referring to the "Mad Dog of Medford," and to the county as "The State of Paranoia." In February 1933 Editor Robert Waldo Ruhl of the Mail Tribune rose up in righteous anger against Editor Banks, who was nearly defeated already by his own misfortunes. Editor Ruhl, brother of Arthur Ruhl of the New York Herald Tribune, is everything that his enemy is not: tall, handsome, scholarly, a Harvardman (1903), Unitarian, Elk, Rotarian and Republican. The Medford upper crust approves of him highly, but the mass of Rogue River small orchardists and laborers regard him as a silk stocking. With an editorial entitled "TIME TO WAKE UP," Editor Ruhl called upon his readers to "prevent armed rebellion and bloodshed under Llewellyn A. Banks--the John Brown of the Depression." The climax occurred when the courthouse was sacked and ballot boxes stolen. Constable Prescott was sent to Banks's house to arrest him. Banks, who had loudly declared he would never be taken alive, took down his hunting rifle and drilled Constable Prescott through the heart. Thoroughly frightened, the law-abiding populace rallied around Editor Ruhl and his Mail Tribune, put Banks and a half dozen henchmen behind bars.

Foreign Correspondence. Most famed managing editor the New York Times ever had was Carr Van Anda, who held the desk from 1904 to 1926, the title for six years more. He had an able assistant named Frederick T. Birchall. Born in England 63 years ago, Frederick Birchall broke in as a volunteer reporter on a provincial newspaper, worked a whole year for $2.50. In 1893 he went to the U. S., covered Manhattan police headquarters during the exciting days of Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. In 1905 he got a desk job on the Times.

When Newsman Birchall took Carr Van Anda's place, he inherited everything but the title of managing editor. The Times continued to call him "acting," presumably because he had never become a naturalized U. S. citizen and the Times was being accused of being pro-British. Three years ago, near the regular retiring age, he was sent abroad in charge of the Times's distinguished European service. Elderly, distinguished looking, Correspondent Birchall set about his new work as energetically as any youngster. His dispatches from Berlin and Vienna were models of alert, vigorous reporting (see p. 17). Few weeks ago they were cited for excellence by a self-appointed prize committee composed of the editors of The American Spectator. Last week Correspondent Birchall received a more tangible award : the $500 Pulitzer Prize. Editorial. This $500 award went to a paper even smaller than the one in Medford -- the Atlantic (Iowa) News-Telegraph (circulation, 3,950). Excerpts from Editor Edwin Percy Chase's Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial "Where Is Our Money?": "It is announced that at 10 p. m. William Randolph Hearst, well-known publisher, will broadcast an address on the subject which appears as the caption of this article. . . . Where is our money? The answer is not difficult. . . . We spent it." Cartoon. Five hundred dollars was awarded to Edmund Duffy of the Baltimore Sun (winner in 1931) for "California Points With Pride," showing an evil-looking Governor Rolph pointing to two dead bodies hanging by their necks from a tree. Reporting. The same theme--the lynching of John Holmes and Thomas Thurmond in San Jose, Calif, after they had confessed the kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart (TIME, Dec. 4)--provided the prize-winning news story of the year. To Royce Brier of the San Francisco Chronicle went $1,000, fattest of newspaper awards, for demonstrating "strict accuracy, terseness, the preference being given to articles that achieve some public good commanding public attention and respect." Whipping out against time for an extra edition, Reporter Brier's story was extraordinarily coherent, thoroughly factual and highly sensitive to the feel of the mob. Only occasionally was it marred by such purple journalese as: "King Mob was in the saddle and he was an inexorable ruler." Royce Brier, 38, broke in as a cub on the Chronicle 14 years ago. Like most good newshawks he learned his trade on the night police and Federal beats before getting general assignments. He is thin-faced, quiet, deliberate, usually has a straight-stemmed briar pipe clenched in his teeth. Three years ago Appleton published his first novel, Crusade. His new fame should speed acceptance of two more now under consideration by publishers. Vaguely embarrassed by the prize announcement, Royce Brier snorted: "Hell, I didn't win that all by myself. What about the other boys on the assignment, and what about the rewrite men who handled it in the office?" Letters. In three out of five categories the jury was overruled by the Columbia School of Journalism Advisory Board. Instead of Mary of Scotland (the jury's choice), Men in White was declared the best play. The book jury chose Helen C. White's A Watch in the Night, but the $1,000 prize for the best novel finally went to Caroline Miller for Lamb in his Bosom (TIME, Sept. 18). The jury voted Mark Sullivan's Over Here (fifth volume of Our Times') the best book on history but Herbert Agar got the $2,000 award for his The People's Choice. Undisputed were the choices for best American biography--John Hay, by Tyler Dennett; and the best volume of verse--Collected Verse by Robert Hillyer.

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