The Press: The Paper Everyone's Talking About

The delivery truck pulled up to the White House, and Driver William Shaw got out with the ten free daily copies of the New York Herald Tribune that are allotted to the White House tenant. But before Shaw had a chance to drive off, a White House messenger appeared, ripped the wrapper off the bundle and tossed all ten Tribs back into the truck. "What'll I do with them?" asked Shaw. "I don't care what you do with them," said the White House man coldly, "but I don't want them around here."

Thus last week, an irate Tribune reader named John Fitzgerald Kennedy served public notice that he no longer wanted the Trib—not even for free. Around the corner from the White House, at the Card and Gift Town Shop, Newsdealer Bernard Gorlen had already got the word. The White House called to cancel its subscription to the 23 daily and 13 Sunday Tribunes that Gorlen has been delivering since Inauguration Day. What was bothering the President, Gorlen wondered. For the rest of the week, all he had to do was to read the papers—any paper—to find out.

"Light Reading." By far the best source on the subject was Presidential Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, who not only helps pick the boss's reading matter but shares Kennedy's feelings about the Tribune. Salinger was so eager to talk about the cancellation that he began dropping broad hints all over—although no one caught them at first but CBS and the Washington Post. Then, as reporters began pressing him for an explanation, Salinger put out several—each one contradicting the one before. After all, said Salinger, the boss "can read just so many papers. We get five New York newspapers now,* and that gives us quite a spread of opinion. In fact, the people around here have been reading the Herald Tribune less and less." Was the President sore at the Trib? Well, no, said Salinger. Then he noticed that no one seemed to believe him.

The President was sore at the Trib, all right, said Salinger, but that had nothing to do with it: "If we were to cancel subscriptions to all the papers who were opposed to the Administration, it would be kind of light reading around here." Well then, he was asked, why did Kennedy blow his top? "I think the culmination came," Salinger went on, "with the disclosure that the Herald Tribune completely ignored the stockpiling investigation." He was referring to a leftover Eisenhower Administration scandal, in which a copper company got a $6,000,000 windfall. Salinger was wrong, argued Trib Reporter David Wise. The Trib had indeed missed early editions with the story, but finally carried it—in the second section on page 32. Humphed Salinger: "If we're interested in history we'll start buying history books."

Dust & Dirt. By presidential taste, the Republican Tribune rarely makes pleasant reading these days. While other papers, as if anxious to give Kennedy the benefit of all possible doubt, waited for the dust in Pecos to settle a bit before jumping onto the Billie Sol Estes story, the Trib not only stirred dust but dished dirt. Eight days before the New York Times, for example, saw fit to move the developments in Pecos onto Page One, the Trib's frontpage headlines screamed: TEXAS SCANDAL REACHES FAR.