Swing (Feb-Dec 1952)

80 February, 19^2 ism been drastically revised but a far healthier point of view toward the responsibilities and the purpose has been established. Journalism — preRoss journalism — didn't reflect very accurately the people who were being written about or the people who were doing the writing, generally a hard-bitten crew whose conversation bore no resemblance at all to its prose style. Ross's stable of very talented writers introduced a style that was far more colloquial and — since style is largely determined and conditioned by content — they got a lot closer to the essential facts. "The New Yorker," said Ross, "was founded to make sense and to make money." It made a lot of both but, much more importantly, it shamed practically every American who writes into making — or trying to make — sense, too. It's rather odd that a man whose own rather untidy life was hardly dictated by common sense should have imprinted common sense into the journalism and a large part of the fiction of the nation. But then Ross was full of contradictions. Robert Benchlcy swore that Ross once said to him: "Don't think I'm not incoherent." And he was. Yet, he expected and demanded of his writers a degree of coherence that has rarely been equalled. "The New Yorker" is surrounded by an aura of elegance but Ross's great preoccupation was not elegance; it was clarity. He drove his writers crary with a host of explosive, frequently profane and often hilarious marginal notes — "Who he?", "What mean?", sometimes just a wild curlicue indicative of hopeless desperation. A. J. Liebling once got back a manuscript containing 160 of Ross's peppery, petulant marginal notes, the world's record at "The New Yorker." This immense thirst for clarification, amplification and accuracy spread far beyond the covers of "The New Yorker"; it touched and deeply influenced everyone who read "The New Yorker"; ultimately, it influenced writers who hadn't read the magazine but who were under the spell of writers who had. Ross, of course, had much more in him as editor than a simple thirst for accuracy; he was an intuitive genius who knew when writing was right and when it was wrong (though frequently he didn't know why it was wrong). But the intuition died with the man; it could hardly be imitated. The hatred of bunk, of which "The New Yorker" and especially Ross was a personification, left its mark on everyone who writes or edits or publishes. An awful lot of malarkey disappeared from journalism in the 2y-year history of "The New Yorker." Rumple Their Hair a Little THE weakness of most interview programs: everyone is just too darned polite to everyone else. You can't ask really searching questions because searching questions are likely to be embarrassing questions. And you mustn't embarrass a celebrity or he won't play. I hasten to add that this desire to rumple the hair of the famous folk is not sadism on my part — not entirely, anyway — but a simple healthy desire to put a little ginger into these programs. j This I Believe IN his opening broadcast Edward R. Murrow stated the general principles and objectives of "This I Believe" much more succinctly than I could so I repeat them here. "This I Believe. By that name we bring you a new series of radio broadcasts presenting the personal philosophies of thoughtful men and women in all walks of life. In this brief time each night, a banker or a butcher, a painter