Pew Out

No. 1 tradepaper to the U. S. Press is James Wright Brown's Editor & Publisher. Last week it contained an announcement which startled its 10,000 readers, mostly admen, newspaper writers, executives, owners. Famed Editor Marlen Edwin Pew was quitting. Reason for his resignation was that Editor Pew, 58, became worried about his health on a recent trip around the world, resolved to get a good rest. Continued was Editor Pew's informal editorial page, "Shop Talk At Thirty." It was announced that Mr. Brown would serve henceforth as both editor and publisher of Editor & Publisher.

Marlen Edwin Pew was born in Ohio, left school in the seventh grade when his father died. A kindly teacher pieced out Marlen's book learning after hours, "graduated" him in her front parlor. At 15 he took to newspaper work, liked it, never lacked for a good job thereafter. He reported first for the Cleveland Press, worked on the Hearstian New York Evening Journal, was Eastern manager of Newspaper Enterprise Association. In 1912 he helped organize United Press, then edited the Philadelphia News-Post and was proud to be jailed overnight on a criminal libel charge brought and dropped by a hoodlum politician. During the War, Editor Pew worked in the War Department's News Bureau, where he originated the U. S. system of publishing casualty lists in full.

In Editor & Publisher, which he joined in 1924 after resigning from the Hearstian International News Service "on principle," Editor Pew found a resounding forum for his views. Among his antipathies is Gossip Columnist Walter Winchell, who tried to make capital of the Philadelphia jailing and was ringingly denounced by Editor Pew as: "A Broadway scavenger ... a physical coward ... a journalistic gangster."

Another standing dislike is pressagentry. Marlen Pew also shares with his great friend Roy Wilson Howard a dislike of the American Newspaper Guild, often crosses journalistic swords with the Guild's redoubtable President Heywood Broun. Another Pew bugaboo is the stage reporter. Scornfully cried Editor Pew on one occasion: "The corrupt, cheapskate movie-type reporter may exist, but I do not know him."

Interviewing himself in "Shop Talk At Thirty," Marlen Pew gave his own ideas on what a newspaper should be: "Publish more news, more expertly written. . . . Make every word count, have some decent respect for the time of the reader, and publish more and better news pictures and cartoons. . . . Tell a common story and quit--do not repeat the facts three times, in introduction, description and interview. ... Be natural, direct, wholesome, alert. Work for the readers, busy people who are depending on you to tell them 'what's doing.' See the beauty in life as well as the horror. Tell it all and tell it straight. Charge 5-c- per copy daily and 10-c- Sunday and give quality value."

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