Sunshine

To the 2.000 subscribers of The Nudist, official organ of the International Nudist Conference, went last week not The Nudist but copies of a substitute called Sunshine. Subscribers were disappointed to observe that Sunshine contained no photographs of nudists disporting themselves in the gravel-pits, weed-patches or trout streams of their colonies. It contained only solemnly written text concerning U. S. nudists and their more dignified activities.* Sunshine was preceded by a letter explaining what had happened to The Nudist. A month ago its publishers-because they wished to confine their circulation to subscribers, eliminate entirely The Nudist's newsstand sales of 110,000--applied for second class mailing privileges. Postoffice authorities allowed The Nudist third class mailing privileges when it started seven months ago, investigated it, decided to ban it altogether. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union went to the aid of The Nudist with a "freedom- of-the-press" suit to force Postmaster General Farley to restore the magazine to the mails.

The editors of The Nudist are two serious, high-minded, sincere clergymen, Dr. Henry Strong Huntington (Presbyterian) and Dr. Ilsey Boone (Baptist). The pictures they publish in The Nudist are never pornographic. They appear because "they give the cause a wide appeal ..." and "The Nudist is a missionary."

D. P. I.

Government officials who want to know what the U. S. Press is saying about their little world generally have had a surprisingly hard time. Hiring a clipping agency is expensive. Few departments enjoy the services of a paper-clipper like little Theodore Gilman Bilbo, onetime Governor of Mississippi, who last summer got a $6,000 a year job "assembling current information for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration" (TIME, July 3). In full swing last week was a Federal organization designed to correct this situation--the Division of Press Intelligence, which publishes a daily Press Intelligence Bulletin of 60 or more mimeographed pages of condensed news and editorials.

Created by the President last summer, D. P. I. was operating last week in a six-room office in the huge Department of Commerce Building. At its head was Katherine C. Blackburn, a dark, plump, capable woman who has been a professional newsreader and factfinder for 14 years. She clipped papers for President Taft, did research work at the World Economic Conference for William Christian Bullitt, recently functioned as factfinder to Professor Raymond Moley. Miss Blackburn has a smoothly organized staff of 17 assistants to scissor, file and index clips from 400 or more U. S. newspapers. She does most of the editorial work of rewriting the contents into brief paragraphs in the Bulletin, distributed to all Government officials who ask for it. Beside each item in the Bulletin is a record of its source, the paper's politics, the date, and an index number whereby any reader can identify the original clipping, get it complete from D. P. I.'s files.

Specially attentive to editorial comment, the Bulletin recently contained summaries of eleven editorials commending the State Department for denouncing the extradition treaties with Greece, last week gave the gist of 44 on Russian recognition. Departmentalized under five general heads ("Major News, General Conditions, National Recovery, Independent Agencies, Government Departments"), it condensed Press reactions from the Kansas City Star's criticisms of General Johnson to Buy Now editorials like "How Old Is the Rabbit in Your Hat" (Peoria, 111., Journal-Transcript). The Bulletin's preface to an individual summary of 22 editorials on inflation and gold buying: "The majority are general discussions of new gold buying plan, although there is strong undertone of disapproval; feeling of resentment against uncertainty of monetary policy and inability of general public to understand what Government is trying to do continues."

* Activities of undignified nudists in the Midwest, who have recently tried to secure vaudeville contracts, were last week chronicled in Variety thus: "All nudist camps charge a daily-fee . . . some as low as one buck for each day in the open. For that buck the chump nudy gets two meals a day . . . that means a hunk of lettuce, with the more sand the better."

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