by Gay Talese
But Rosenthal was a very aware young man. Since his appointment as editor of the New York staff in 1963, following a brilliant career as a correspondent in India, Poland, and Japan, Rosenthal had inspired a very large and somewhat lethargic assemblage to compete favorably with Reston’s men in Washington and with the traditionally superior foreign staff. Now Rosenthal was obviously being considered for one of the four assistant-managing-editor positions. These jobs, except in Salisbury’s case, were held by men who had been on The Times for thirty or forty years and had risen from the ranks of copyreaders. The men were still physically sound and mentally alert, and they would no doubt be displeased by any lessening of their responsibilities—but if Rosenthal was to gain experience as a top executive, one of the older men would have to be moved elsewhere. It was the inevitable process by which the institution perpetuated itself—the old order changeth. If Harrison Salisbury did not go, then it would have to be one of the other three editors. One of these was a man who had been giving Clifton Daniel much trouble of late—the editor of the bullpen, Theodore Bernstein.
Bernstein, a native New Yorker in his early sixties, was a quick, sharp, didactic editor. He was a chain smoker who had suffered a mild heart attack recently, although outwardly he seemed very calm and contained. Of average height and slight build, with fair complexion and thinning dark hair, he had an alert, thin, friendly face with soft brown eyes, and he was as approachable as any man on The Times. But with a pencil in his hand, Theodore Bernstein could become suddenly cold and dogmatic. He had been an outstanding professor of journalism at Columbia University, from which he had graduated in 1925, the year he joined The Times as a copyreader; since then he had written several successful books on journalism and the proper use of the English language, and in 1939, though he was only thirty-five, he was put in charge of war copy at The Times. He wrote many of the big headlines of World War II and he personally scrutinized the metal matrix of The Times’ front page at night before it was rolled away to the press machines. Bernstein later edited the Churchill memoirs for the paper, as well as those of Cordell Hull and General Walter Bedell Smith, and when Turner Catledge in the Nineteen-fifties called for a better-written, better-edited New York Times, Bernstein was established as the enforcer of standards—he became The Times’ grammarian or, as Encounter magazine later described him, its “governess.”
From his tiny enclosed office in the southeast corner of the newsroom, fortified outside his door by subordinate editors who shared most of his opinions on news and grammar, Bernstein also published a little bulletin called Winners & Sinners that was distributed to Timesmen in New York and throughout the world; it listed examples of their work, good and bad, that had appeared recently in The New York Times, and it also included a recitation of Bernstein’s grammatical rules and comments. These were memorized by deskmen throughout the newsroom, who were held accountable by Bernstein for the maintenance of his principles; thus the deskmen, in the interest of a more readable and grammatical newspaper, gained new and rather heady power during the Nineteen-fifties with Bernstein as their mentor, chief of the super-desk. Such a position, of course, made Bernstein a villain with those reporters who had their own ideas about writing. They charged that the deskmen, overreacting to Bernstein’s rules, were merely hatchet men who deleted from stories the choicest phrases and gems of originality. Turner Catledge did not become involved in the feud at that time. If Bernstein’s men went too far they could always be checked, and the quicker pace of postwar life, the coming of television, the increased cost of news production, among other factors, required that The Times become a more tightly edited paper for faster reading. Catledge realized that somebody had to worry about the proper uses of that or which, whom or who, and so Catledge left this to Bernstein, who knew best, and Catledge concerned himself with interoffice politics, which he knew best.
Bernstein’s power as an assistant managing editor began to diminish after Catledge brought Daniel back to New York from Moscow in 1955 and began to groom him as the next managing editor. While Bernstein knew that he had never been a candidate for Catledge’s job, being of Catledge’s generation, to say nothing of his being a Jew, he nonetheless quietly resented Catledge’s elevating his younger Southern protégé to a point where Daniel, even while Catledge was still the managing editor, outranked Bernstein in the executive pecking order. Bernstein and Daniel saw things in a quite different way, their styles did not blend; Bernstein, a reverse snob, was as conspicuously informal as Daniel was formal. When Daniel was named to succeed Catledge in 1964 and when he redecorated Catledge’s old office, ordering a brand-new blue-black tweed rug, Bernstein requested and received for his floor a chunk of the old tattered Catledge rug that had been pulled up, possibly to be junked. While Daniel sat in his traditional English office in his wrinkleproof chair, Bernstein occupied his office across the newsroom with his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow, sitting on an old wooden chair behind a scratchy desk, upon which he wrote with flawless grammar on the cheapest memo paper he could find. During Daniel’s first two years as managing editor he admitted to having raised his voice in anger only once, presumably at Tom Wicker; but others in the newsroom claimed to have heard Daniel locked in quarrels with Bernstein on at least a half-dozen occasions, usually the result of Bernstein’s having passed off an irreverent remark about one of Daniel’s pet projects, most likely the women’s page.
Though Daniel would prefer to be identified with several of The Times’ recent changes for the better—the expanded coverage of cultural news, the more literate obituaries, the encouragement of flavor and mood in “hard-news” stories that formerly would have been done in a purely routine way, he is more quickly credited with, or blamed for, the women’s page. Bernstein and other critics say that the women’s page gets too much space, and they particularly oppose the publication of lengthy stories by the women’s-page editor, Charlotte Curtis, a five-foot fast-stepping Vassar alumna, describing the activities of wealthy wastrels from Palm Beach to New York at a time when most of America is moving toward the goals of a more egalitarian society. Although Miss Curtis is rarely flattering to her subjects, many of them lack the wit to realize this—but what is more important about Miss Curtis’ work is that Clifton Daniel likes to read it. Bernstein’s deskmen, therefore, rarely trim her stories, and she is extremely careful with her facts, knowing that should she make an error it will most likely be Daniel, and not Bernstein, who will catch her. A few years ago, in a story on Princess Radziwill, she mentioned the Prince’s nickname, “Stash,” only to receive the next day a memo from Daniel noting that while it was pronounced Stash, it was spelled Stas. Having previously checked the spelling with Pamela Turnure, then secretary to Prince Radzi-will’s sister-in-law, Jacqueline Kennedy, Miss Curtis telephoned Daniel to inform him that he was wrong—it was spelled Stash.
“On what authority?” he asked
“The White House,” she quickly answered.
“Well, when I knew him,” Daniel said, “it was spelled S-t-a-s.”
Daniel hung up. She thought that was the end of it. But Daniel tracked the Prince down in Europe, and some months later Miss Curtis got another memo from Daniel—it was Stas.
But should Bernstein criticize Charlotte Curtis’ work, Daniel is usually quick to defend her, as he did in a lengthy memo after one of her stories had been challenged in Winners & Sinners. Bernstein, offended by a Curtis paragraph that read—“The McDonnells are like the Kennedys. They are rich Irish Catholics, and there are lots of them.”—reprinted this in Winners & Sinners with a warning to the staff: “Omit racial, religious or national designations unless they have some relevance to the news or are part of the biographical aggregate, as in an obit or a Man in the News. Perhaps it is a tribute to the Irish that ‘Irish Catholic’ does not seem offensive, but would you write ‘rich Russian Jews’?”
Bernstein then received a note from Daniel: “I agree with you that it is a tribute to the Irish that ‘Irish Catholic’ does
not seem offensive, and I also agree that ‘rich Russian Jew’ might be offensive. But it seems to me that the prejudice is more in the mind of the reader than it is in the words of the writer, and that we can certainly say that a family is rich, that it is Russian and that it is Jewish, if those things are relevant to the news. In fact, I myself have written about such families and nobody ever questioned the relevance of doing so. But the trick is not to put these facts together in one bunch so that they have a cumulative, pejorative aroma.” In a postscript, Daniel added: “Since this note was dictated, we have published an obituary of Sean O’Casey, calling him a poor Irish Protestant.”
Another point of contention between Bernstein and Daniel was centered around Harrison Salisbury, who, with Daniel’s strong support, had been elevated from the reporting ranks in 1962 and made an editor; by 1964 he had become an assistant managing editor. One of Salisbury’s duties was to read The Times each morning and then write a memo for Daniel about the strengths and weaknesses of the edition, not only comparing The New York Times’ reporting with the New York Herald Tribune’s and other newspapers’, but also commenting on the general appearance of the paper, its makeup and headlines and pictures and prose style—Salisbury was suddenly encroaching upon Bernstein’s spécialité, and Bernstein became very uneasy in the newsroom. Bernstein, the watchdog of The Times for so long, now felt that he was being watched. One evening, after Salisbury had invited himself into the bullpen to observe Bernstein and two subordinate editors laying out page one, Bernstein could contain himself no longer. He wrote a long memo to Daniel that night. He wrote it in his own hand, the secretary having gone, and it was just as well. It would be embarrassing to dictate this sort of note. In it he emphasized that Salisbury had no business watching the bullpen editors making up the front-page dummy, which is distributed to all the senior editors anyway, and he added that he would interpret a reappearance by Salisbury as a vote of “no confidence” from Daniel. Bernstein then described Salisbury in a way that he would never have done under ordinary circumstances: “It was almost as if he were a spy and we [the bullpen editors] the ones being spied upon.” The reply from Daniel the next day dismissed the significance of the incident. There had apparently been a slight misunderstanding on Salisbury’s part, Daniel said, and he was sorry if it had caused uneasiness or resentment.
The Harrison Salisbury that Clifton Daniel knew was not the Salisbury that Bernstein knew. Daniel had first met Salisbury in London during World War II while Salisbury was working for the United Press. Salisbury was then a very shy, solitary figure separated from his wife, who was still in the United States, a man uncertain of himself and his future. After Salisbury had joined The Times, and particularly after Daniel had taken Salisbury’s place in Moscow—Salisbury had been The Times’ Moscow bureau chief for five very difficult years—the two men discovered that they had a good deal in common and much compatibility. Therefore it did not surprise Salisbury, although it surprised nearly everyone else on The New York Times’ staff, when Daniel began to pull Salisbury up the executive ladder as Daniel himself started to rise. And Daniel had not regretted it. Salisbury was an indefatigable working executive, possessing a creative mind bursting with new ideas and approaches. He had overcome the shyness that had once so dominated him; and, happily remarried and incredibly well organized, Salisbury was one of the most impressive journalists that Daniel had ever known. He had written many fine books, including a novel, and he was much sought after as a panelist on television shows and speechmaker on campuses; and there was nothing about Harrison Salisbury’s manner that was in the least conspiratorial, insofar as Daniel could see. And yet Bernstein was not alone in his feelings about Salisbury. The Washington bureau, not unexpectedly, was quick to condemn him, with one reporter nicknaming Salisbury “Rasputin,” and another explaining: “Salisbury spent so many years watching who was standing next to Stalin that now he’s standing next to Stalin!”
The mere sight of Salisbury, to those who do not know him, conveys a sense of severity, a chilling aloofness. He has an angular face with a slightly drooping gray moustache over thin lips that rarely smile, and his small pale blue eyes peer without expression through steel-rimmed glasses which, worn out of habit, do not appreciably improve his adequate eyesight. Six feet tall, Salisbury seems even taller because he has a lean, lanky body, broad shoulders, and a rather small head; his hair, once blondish, is now a silk-thread gray parted high on the right and combed hard across his forehead, the longer strands usually hanging over his left eye when, head down, he sits at his desk reading or typing. He neither drinks nor smokes. He gave up drinking in 1949 while preparing himself, psychologically and physically, for The New York Times assignment in Moscow during the very worst years of the Cold War, days of denial and conspiracy. He gave up smoking a few years later in the interests of his health, and now, instead of cigarettes, he sucks Life-Savers, clicking and cracking them against his teeth as he sits behind his desk in The Times’ newsroom reading Soviet journals, or jotting tiny notes in his little black book, or looking with a glazed stare out across the rows and rows of heads bent over type-writers.
Though few knew him in the summer of 1966, nearly everyone in the newsroom seemed to have strong opinions about Salisbury, but by no means were they all negative. He was regarded by many as not only a superb reporter and writer, but also a highly effective editor, and his supervision of The Times’ coverage of the Kennedy assassination was regarded as extraordinary. Salisbury’s unpopularity, a few of them said, was undoubtedly the result of his having to carry out orders from Daniel, or from above. And yet Salisbury, others said, carried out orders with excessive enthusiasm. He seemed to like playing Rasputin. And fortifying this image, however unjustly, were several small interoffice tales of Salisbury’s suspecting schemes within the United States government and then chastising reporters for not detecting them, of his flying down to Washington to encourage the resignation of a veteran Timesman who had fallen out of favor with the New York office, or of Salisbury’s sudden reply to the person who had just returned to him a piece of paper that he had let fall to the floor: “When I drop a piece of paper on the floor, that’s where I want it to stay!” One day Salisbury, angry, walked across the room after noting that The Times had not, in its late-edition story about Jacqueline Kennedy, included the fact that she had visited her husband’s grave unexpectedly the night before.
“Who was the late man last night?” he called out, as a curved desk of copyreaders all looked up.
“I was,” one man said, finally.
“Why didn’t you put a new lead on that Jackie story?”
“I didn’t believe it warranted a new lead.”
“Well, you guessed wrong.”
“I don’t agree with you, Mr. Salisbury. Jackie had done that before. That’s why I didn’t think the story warranted a new lead.”
“Did you check with the bullpen?”
“I did, and they agreed that it didn’t warrant a new lead.”
Salisbury’s lips tightened, and quickly he turned and walked away. A few days later one of the subordinate editors on the national desk showed the copyreader a memo that Salisbury had written charging the copyreader with bad judgment, and accusing him of having made similar errors in the past.
“That’s not true,” the copyreader said. “I’d like to answer this.”
“Oh, no,” the subordinate editor said, quietly, “don’t answer. Just watch your step. He’s keeping a dossier on a lot of guys.”
The two other assistant managing editors—one was named Robert Garst, the other Emanuel Freedman—were quiet, unprovocative men, and the newsroom gossip had never centered around them in the way that it had around Harrison Salisbury and Theodore Bernstein. Robert Garst was a thin, trimly tailored, sandy-haired, somewhat chilly Virginian. He had a lean, ruddy face and light horn-rimmed eyeglasses that made his cool, pale eyes seem even more distant. A graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, Garst joined The Times in 1925 a
s a copyreader on the city desk, and was joined on that desk three months later by Theodore Bernstein, whom he had known on the Columbia campus. Shortly after their employment on The Times, Garst and Bernstein also got jobs teaching journalism at Columbia during their off hours, and in 1933 they collaborated on a book of instruction for copyreaders. A few years later Garst and Bernstein were promoted to subordinate editorships on the copydesk, beginning a somewhat parallel climb up through the desk complex that culminated in 1952 with Catledge’s announcement that they were now assistant managing editors. But at the same time, privately, Catledge told them that they would go no further. This was to be their final advancement on The Times, they would never succeed him. From now on, Catledge said, they should devote themselves to helping him run the expanding staff, blending their personal aims into the larger purpose of the paper, and assisting him in the selection and training of younger Timesmen who would one day be their successors.
Bernstein did this—it had been Bernstein, in fact, who had first alerted Catledge to Rosenthal’s possibilities as an editor—and if Bernstein lost any personal incentive as a result of being told at the age of forty-eight that he would climb no higher, it was never perceivable. But in Garst’s case it might have been different. Perhaps Bernstein had been much more realistic about his limitations on The Times than Garst. If Arthur Hays Sulzberger did not want Felix Frankfurter sitting on the Supreme Court bench, he certainly did not want Theodore Bernstein sitting in the managing editor’s chair—a showcase position on The Times, one that should offer the ultimate in social mobility, a passport through all the prejudicial barriers of the American democratic system. And Theodore Bernstein, accepting the situation as it was, concentrated on his craft as an editor, gaining his confidence from this; and he was a free man, or at least he seemed unintimidated by a fear of going too far: he did as he pleased, said what he thought. It had been Bernstein, together with a bullpen subordinate editor named Lewis Jordan, who led the opposition within the office during that night in 1961 when Orvil Dryfoos ordered The Times to tone down Tad Szulc’s story about the Bay of Pigs invasion plan. The next day Bernstein was in Dryfoos’ office on the fourteenth floor arguing that there was a difference between matters of national interest and national security, and Bernstein said that Dryfoos had confused the two. When matters of national security arise in a war situation or a near-war situation, Bernstein told Dryfoos, there is not the slightest question about what course the press should follow—it should do nothing that would jeopardize the nation’s safety. But in matters of national interest, Bernstein went on, the press has not only a proper option but indeed a bounden duty to speak up.