The Press: Dimmy to the Sun

• Share

Into the Chicago Sun's newsroom strode little Milburn ("Pete") Akers, managing editor, looking like an unhappy Jeff alongside the 6-ft. beanstalk of a man he had in tow. This, announced Managing Editor Akers to the Sun staff, is our new executive editor.

E. Z. ("Dimmy") Dimitman's handshakes with reporters and deskmen were perfunctory, and his looks were all against him: round-shouldered, reed-thin, with a small chin and a mousy little reddish mustache. A few hours later the staff liked his looks a lot better.

At the picture desk, Dimmy found the next day's picture page being laid out. He asked for a red pencil, studied pictures briefly through his thick-lensed glasses, shortly came up with a layout that went into the paper. In the art room he did not like the way pictures were being retouched. He had the white paint taken off, then showed the artists how he wanted the job done. At the copy desk he looked at a few heads, then gave his first flat order: no more heads starting with verbs, like INDICT 16 MILLS ON FLOUR PRICES.

Said one Sun man: "He's exactly what we've been needing around this shop." Said another, who had been planning to leave in disgust: "I think I'll stick around awhile. He looks O.K." New Man. Until he went to work for the Sun last week, 45-year-old Eli Zachary Dimitman had never worked outside Philadelphia. He joined the Philadelphia Inquirer 18 years ago as rewriteman, was city editor when Moses L. (Moe) Annenberg, the racing-sheet publisher now dead, took over the Inquirer in 1936. Talent-wise Moe Annenberg at once made Dimmy executive editor.

Under Dimmy the Inquirer rapidly became a bright, aggressive paper. Dimmy changed type faces and make-up and used more pictures; he campaigned for such things as free school lunches and against such things as the public sale of fireworks. So well did Dimmy succeed that an appreciative Moe Annenberg presented him with a $1,000 platinum Swiss watch so fancy and begadgeted that, said office legend, a little man popped out of it on the hour to announce race results at Hialeah.

When he left Philadelphia to take his new Sun job, the Inquirer's circulation had risen from 270,000 to 461,000 daily, from 650,000 to 1,380,000 Sunday. His popularity with the staff was such that, on the day he left, the Inquirer's eight Washington bureaumen got a telephone call reminding them that they worked for the Inquirer, not for Dimitman.

Old Woe. Since its birth, Dec. 5, 1941, the Chicago Sun has had a pile of woe. But its greatest weakness has been a lack of one of the basic requirements of newspaper success: high morale on the staff.

Blame must be placed, since he is top boss, on the Sun's bumpkinish, pumpkinish Publisher Silliman Evans, righthand man to Owner Marshall Field. Publisher Evans has been either unwilling or unable to install high-powered, adequately experienced men in executive jobs. Result: a constant, white-hot office turmoil, and one of the biggest turnovers of employes in newspaper annals. For many, the Sun newsroom has been a worrisome place to work.