The Press: Information, Please

One day last fall ex-Trustbuster Thurman Arnold posed a problem to Helen Rogers Reid, mistress of the New York Herald Tribune. Arnold was representing a group of State Department employees who had been fired—on unspecified charges—in the Government's loyalty investigation. Arnold thought that an important question of civil rights was at stake. Said Mrs. Reid: "Why not get in touch with Bert Andrews?"

Instead of turning the story over to others in his 15-man Washington bureau, Chief Andrews set to digging it out himself. His dispassionate study of the case of "Mr. Blank" filled six columns of the Herald Tribune on Nov. 2. Factual as a cookie recipe, it struck a more telling blow for liberty than any arm-waving leftist could have landed, and it caused a change in State Department policy.

Last week the story won Andrews the 1947 Heywood Broun Award ($500) of the C.I.O. American Newspaper Guild. To working newsmen, the Broun Award is the next best thing to the Pulitzer Prize.

A non-Guildsman and no crusader, leathery Bert Andrews, 46, had stubbornly stuck to his reporter's last through seven years as the Trib's top capital hand. A Washington assignment offers subtle temptations: if a reporter is not careful he may turn into a pundit, or a cocktail-swigging socialite, or become a power behind some politician's throne. Such lures have left Andrews cold. In Albany and way points (Sacramento, Chicago, the Paris Herald, and Manhattan), he learned to keep his nose for news clean, and his news sources at arm's length.

In Washington, when he found that the Trib's White House man never asked President Roosevelt a question unless the head office prompted it, Andrews transferred the man. Other staffers got the idea: the new boss liked people with plenty of natural curiosity. A faithful front-row attendant at presidential press conferences, Andrews has angered Harry Truman, as he did F.D.R., with his probing inquiries, but won respect and friendship too.

Andrews is just as good at long-range prodding. Last month he pried out Communist William Z. Foster's views on U.S.-Russian relations by a series of mailed questions. But many Trib readers thought that Foster's long-winded, evasive answers weren't worth the space (16 columns).

Andrews likes to hold off-the-record gatherings of opposition bureau chiefs in his apartment on fashionable Crescent Place. There many a Washington bigwig has sat down, drink in hand, to face a quizzing. Says persistent Bert Andrews, who would rather share many facts than miss a few: "Ten guys asking questions are better than one—you all learn more."