Governor v. Editor

Peter Gething, 45, who says he was once a reporter on the London Times and a major in the British Army, is the impecunious owner-editor of a struggling, two-year-old, weekly Charleston, S. C. newspaper called the Record. Edward F. Hutton is a rich, imperiously handsome Manhattan sportsman, investment banker and board chairman of General Foods Corp. who likes to shoot ducks on his Combahee River plantation near Charleston.

Hard and daringly has Editor Gething tried to draw attention to his newspaper, add to its small circulation. Last month he picked on Mr. Hutton (TIME, Dec. 26). In an abusive, threatening editorial he execrated the New Yorker as an arrogant Yankee, retailed a story that Mr. Hutton had instructed his employes to drive motorboats through neighboring preserves in order to frighten ducks from them to his own.

Many a South Carolinian promptly rose to denounce and deny a baseless slur not only on Edward F. Hutton (who in addition to his shooting preserve, maintains a large duck sanctuary) but also on the hospitality of his State. The Columbia Chamber of Commerce investigated the charge, found not even a rumor to support it.

Far from increasing, the circulation of the Charleston Record soon dropped to zero, for the simple reason that it ceased to appear. Editor Gething explained that there had been a mechanical breakdown. Last week it became known that South Carolina's Governor Blackwood, in order to express the hospitable sentiments of his State, had made Edward F. Hutton a Lieutenant Colonel on his staff.

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