The Press: Bing's Song

One day last week Jack Schermerhorn, a police reporter on the Detroit Free Press, hustled from the police station to the office. He was looking for Malcolm Wallace Bingay, Free Press editorial director, and he was going to give him a thrashing. Schermerhorn had just read Bingay's new book, Of Me I Sing (Bobbs-Merrill; $3.50),.and he didn't like what Bingay had written about his father and his uncle (James Schermerhorn, once editor of the Detroit Times). Sample: "I have never met a more precise and perfect example of a hypocrite . . ."

It took Managing Editor Dale Stafford to keep young...