News for the Times Staff

The New York Times this week carried an item of news of special interest to its 650-man news staff -- biggest of any U.S. paper. The staff had a new boss: Turner Catledge, 50, veteran of 20 years on the Times. In making him managing editor, the Times especially gladdened the hearts of its reporters. Against the custom that tends to send copyreaders and other deskbound editorial men to the top place in news staffs, the Times had again picked a good reporter. Catledge succeeded Edwin L. James, longtime foreign correspondent who died two weeks ago (TIME, Dec. 10). As assistant M.E., Catledge had been James's understudy for seven years. In the last six months, while ailing Editor James was away from his desk, Catledge has been running the news side of the world's most influential paper.

"Jimmy" James, a well-tailored bundle of energy, who liked to carry a cane, scored a big beat on his first day as a Times reporter; he exposed a phony "Rumanian Consul General" who was being feted by New Yorkers. Eventually, so many of his stories were printed that other Times men jokingly called him "Jesse James, the space bandit." Reporter Catledge, a strapping six-foot, easygoing Southerner, got his own newspapering start while still in Mississippi State College. He set type and cubbed in the summers on nearby weeklies. At 22, with $2.07 in his pocket, he rode the rails to Memphis, where he worked briefly at the Press, later switched to the Memphis Commercial Appeal. While covering the 1927 Mississippi River floods, Catledge met Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. Hoover took a shine to the young hustler and wrote his good friend, Times Publisher Adolph Ochs that the Times could use Catledge. But the Times moved slowly. It was two years later--and Cat-ledge had moved on to the Baltimore Sun--before he was offered a job. He joined the Times in 1929 and was sent to Washington.

Though not a polished writer, he made a name by his nimble legwork, tireless reporting, and astute political coverage on taxes, other intricate subjects. He made almost as big a name with his endless repertory of anecdotes, his imitations of congressional windbags, and the skits he put on for Gridiron club shows. When Marshall Field III began his Chicago Sun in 1941, he hired Catledge away from the Times with a dream job as roving chief correspondent, later made him editor of the Sun. But Catledge was not happy. "We just didn't fit," he says. "I'd become so much a part of the Times." After 17 months, he hinted to the Times that he would like to return. Publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger put out the welcome mat, and Catledge was glad to go back at half his $26,000 Sun salary. Two years later, Sulzberger began fitting him for the brass hat he got this week.

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