"No Man Is Safe"

Like the newspaper he edits, solid, affable Erwin Dain ("Spike") Canham of the Christian Science Monitor seldom raises his voice. When he does, he gets a hearing. Last week Editor Canham left his desk in Boston to speak to a meeting of newspaper admen in Chicago. At the end of his speech came a stinger:

"One aspect of newspaper irresponsibility," said he, "is the latitude granted to some syndicated columnists. Undoubtedly one or two of [them] . . . are among the most powerful men in the world today. ... To their doors there is beaten a path by those motivated by malicious gossip, revenge, or character assassination. And no man is safe from these weapons."

Added Editor Canham, whose Monitor never stoops to peep: "Newspapers . . . assume, correctly, that the public likes to read this sort of thing. But is that the final criterion? Or is it even a correct long-range analysis of the profit motive? Will not this continual nursing of demagogic power in the hands of a few keyhole columnists react against newspapers in the long run?"

In so speaking, Editor Canham was following the precept of the Monitor's late great Editor Willis J. Abbot, who never seemed to mind that the Monitor then had 100,000 subscribers, and that the tabloids were on the way to 2,000,000. Abbot scorned the theory "that the editor should give the public what it wants. . . . There are many distinct publics with sharply divergent tastes. ... It is for the editor to choose [his public]. ... If he believes that there are more morons in the field than any other class and is indifferent to all save mass circulation, he will make a paper for morons and exult in the volume of circulation hereby gained."

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