The Press: Washington Winner

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Announced last week as winner of the $1,000 Pugsley award for the best piece of Washington correspondence during 1931 was large, serious Jesse Frederick Essary, for 20 years chief of the Baltimore Sun's bureau at the capital. Correspondent Essary's prize-winning article, published March 5, 1931, was cited for "reportorial skill and industry in bringing to light the hitherto unknown facts and circumstances of the Wickersham Commission's exhaustive report on Prohibition." Honorably mentioned for their work were Charles Griffith Ross (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), Walker Showers Buel (Cleveland Plain Dealer), Ashmun Norris Brown (Providence Journal), Harry W. Frantz (United Press), Drew Pearson (Baltimore Sun), John Snure Jr. (Washington Times).

Firm and factual is most Essary correspondence. He lacks the colorful readability of Arthur Krock (New York Times) or Clinton Wallace Gilbert (New York Evening Post) but his touch is lighter than that of Leroy Tudor Vernon (Chicago Daily News) or George Gould Lincoln (Washington Evening Star). Thoroughly experienced in national politics, he sometimes gives routine stories a special twist to lift them out of the obvious. Unlike his Sim colleague Frank Richardson Kent, he has no sharp sting in his pen. He specializes on complex railroad merger stories, leaves foreign affairs mostly to his smart assistant. Drew Pearson.

Even Correspondent Essary is not infallible. Last month, in covering the evacuation of the Bonus Expeditionary

Force from Washington, he reported Secretary of War Hurley as saying: "It was a great victory. Mac [General MacArthur] is the man of the hour. But I must not make any heroes just now" (TIME, Aug. 8). Secretary Hurley made no such statement. Questioned by newsmen at the White House, he had declared there was "no glory in this deplorable episode, no heroes."