Presidential Assist

When newly victorious John F. Kennedy was waiting to take office, a reporter approached the President-elect. Asked the newsman hesitantly, conscious that he and his publication had frequently been critical of Kennedy during the campaign: Would Kennedy continue to see him in the White House? Yes, said Kennedy. Then he added with a grin: "You and Marianne Means."

If this remark perplexed the reporter, his perplexity was understandable. At that time, hardly anyone knew who Marianne Means was. Kennedy did. What is more, his comment about her was not just a prediction, but a promise. By last week, having just signed a new contract with the Hearst papers ($ 15,000 the first year, $17,500 the second). Marianne Means, 28, could claim title as the only White House correspondent to have got her job through the President.

Sponsor's Role. A rinsed blonde from Sioux City. Iowa. Marianne first caught Kennedy's eye in 1957. while he was still the junior Senator from Massachusetts. A new copy editor on the Lincoln, Neb.. Journal, she got the chance to chauffeur Kennedy, who had flown in to make a speech, back to the airport. Listening to her journalistic dreams (she studied journalism at the University of Nebraska, where she made Phi Beta Kappa), the Senator idly promised to abet them if she ever came to Washington. Marianne promptly went there, and a surprised Kennedy wangled her a post as woman's editor of a suburban daily in the capital's Virginia environs.

Their paths next crossed in 1960. when Marianne, by then a general-assignments reporter in Hearst's Washington bureau, showed up on Kennedy's campaign. Sheer luck had put her there--everybody else in the bureau was sick at the time--but Kennedy remembered her. After the election, he had a talk with Hearst National Editor Frank Conniff. "Are you going to send Marianne to the White House?" asked Kennedy. Conniff, who had not intended to send anyone, lost no time in complying.

The President has continued to play a sponsor's role; she has had numerous audiences in the Oval Room, and he has given her helpful hints for her Sunday column, "D.C. Currents."

"Head Cat." As a newshen, Marianne still has much to learn--and knows it. She once called Kennedy "the head cat of our Government." has a tendency to repeat herself. Her scoops are modest ones, and generally unidentifiable as such without the "exclusive" label that Hearst sometimes attaches to her copy, e.g., a Marianne story last month reporting that key Republicans, specifically Minority Leaders Dirksen and Halleck. had "pledged to support President Kennedy's present policy on Cuba."

Both Hearst and its White House correspondent recognize--and exploit--the value of the presidential interest; on Kennedy's recent West Coast swing, the Hearst papers gave blurb stories about Marianne nearly as much space as Kennedy got.

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