The Press: Contemptuous Item

Back in 1911 a tousle-haired, 18-year-old country boy named Huey Long, from the "redneck" hills of Louisiana's Winn Parish, walked into the dingy Union Street office of the New Orleans Item one day and asked for a job. Said Marshall Ballard, editor of the Item then & now: "I'll give you $10 a week." Said Huey, grinning as he walked out : "That's not enough. Keep your eye on me—I'm going places."

Huey Pierce Long did go places. He went to the Governor's Mansion up in Baton Rouge, to the U. S. Senate in Washington, might just possibly have gone to the White House if he had not been shot in his own skyscraper capitol in 1935. Huey never had much use for a free press. He reserved State advertising, State printing for papers that backed his cause—including Louisiana Progress, which he owned himself. Once he tried to tax every daily in Louisiana out of existence, but the U. S. Supreme Court held his act unconstitutional.

Last week Huey's feud against "lyin' newspapers" (still carried on by Brother Earl Kemp Long, now running to succeed himself as Governor) exploded in a court order for contempt proceedings against the New Orleans Item—the same Item that once offered Huey a job. Marshall Ballard's paper got in trouble when it used some ugly words in connection with some of Long's followers. But the Item was only saying openly what other New Orleans papers have said by implication for years.

New Orleans' oldest daily newspaper (founded 1837) is the morning Times-Picayune, and no competitor has ever seriously challenged its dominance. The Picayune* sent George Wilkins Kendall, reputedly the first U. S. war correspondent, to Vera Cruz in 1847, published the peace treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo before the President of the U. S. even saw it. Before there was a telegraph, the Picayune used to set up stories in type on steamers bound from Mobile to New Orleans, send them galloping through the streets to press by team and wagon.

Hot Town. The afternoon Item was started as a cooperative venture in 1877, fell into the hands of West Virginia-born James Mcllhany Thomson 30 years later, while its editor was serving time in jail for libel. Publisher Thomson hired scholarly Marshall Ballard (who had been a fellow student at Johns Hopkins) to edit the Item.

In 1924 the Item brought out a morning edition called the Tribune. Founded to help Publisher Thomson fight the Times-Picayune, the Tribune gave New Orleans its fourth daily (third was the Item's afternoon rival, the States) and made it one of the hottest competitive newspaper towns in the country. Within six years the Tribune was close behind the States in circulation, the Item and Tribune together outsold the Times-Picayune.

Publisher of the States (and of three other Louisiana papers) was the late Colonel Robert Ewing, a rich, mustachioed, onetime telegraph operator. In 1928 Colonel Ewing supported Huey Long for Governor, and Long won. On the day of Long's inauguration a messenger brought him a note from Colonel Ewing, asking him to add a line or two to his speech. Standing on the steps of the old State House, Huey read it, muttered "- —!'' and tore it up.