The Press: The Columnist's Ball

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When Columnist Jack Scott got a chance last fall in a new job as editorial director to brighten the Vancouver Sun (circ. 213,000), he unleashed all of his formidable flair for spectacular stunts. He sparked exposés, played pictures high and wide, sent his football editor to Formosa to interview Chiang Kai-shek (TIME, Dec. 15) and his woman's page editor to Cuba to cover the aftermath of the revolution. As Scott's fireworks crackled and city-room morale soared, Publisher Don Cromie scoffed at the doubters who wondered if a columnist could run a newspaper, and said: "This may be the greatest idea I'll ever have."

It wasn't. In the longer run, Jack Scott's reforms turned out to be largely froth. Last week, when Scott got back from three weeks of vacation in California, he found a memo from Cromie waiting on his desk. His top-drawer job was gone. Taking Scott's place as editorial boss of the Sun, with the title of managing editor, is a man who has had his eye on the job all along: harddriving, stolid, German-born Erwin Swangard, 50, who was demoted from assistant managing editor to night city editor by Scott, is cordially disliked by most Sunmen. Swangard thought that Scott was too close to his staff to be a good boss, and had mistakenly tried to run the whole paper as a column. Boomed Swangard: "All I want is production. We don't need gimmicks and flash; we need hard-nosed reporting, honesty, accuracy and depth."

Off to open a London office for the Sun, Columnist Scott summed up his feelings in one short sentence: "It was a ball while it lasted."