The Press: End of the Stone Age

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Isidor Feinstein Stone, the irrepressible godfather of New Left journalism, has finally decided to slow down a bit. Last week, in a form letter that began "Dear Friend and Subscriber," he announced that his pungent, polemic four page newsletter, I.F. Stone's Bi-Weekly (TIME, Feb. 8), would close down at the end of this month after a 19-year run.

Now nearly 64, Izzy Stone admitted in his farewell letter that "the compulsion to cover the universe in four pages has become too heavy a burden." Still, he will hardly be silent. Stone has sold the Bi-Weekly subscription list —which has grown from 5,300 in 1953 to 71,000 today—to the New York Review of Books; he will join the Review in January as contributing editor. He plans to write "more articles in depth" like his five part series on "The American Military Establishment" and excerpts from his book The Killings at Kent State—How Murder Went Unpunished, both of which were first published in the Review.^

For several months, Stone has been looking in vain among younger Washington newsmen for a successor to carry on the Bi-Weekly. Although apparently recovered from a heart attack three years ago, he has recently been suffering from chest twinges and eyestrain as deadlines approach, and thus has to give up his ambition to keep the "fleabite paper" alive until the end of next year, "when it will be 20 years old and I'll be 65."

Izzy, though, has no regrets. "I've shown that if you want to be a stubborn damn fool, you can do it your way and get away with it and make a living," he says. "It was a form of self-indulgence, and I've had a wonderful time at it. With all due respect to the New York Times, I'd rather have had these 19 years being editor of this fly sheet than editor of the Times."