Dissenters

Fortnight ago Harvard University announced it would spend the late Mrs. Lucius William Nieman's $1,000,000 bequest "to elevate journalism" by allotting Harvard fellowships to 15 working newspapermen each year (TIME, Jan. 24). First reaction of the publishing business was enthusiastically favorable. Last week two extremely unlike dissenters spoke up late but loud:

Keyholer Walter Winchell volunteered his formula for elevating standards without using the $1,000.000: "Put a few surprises in the editorials. ... Be frugal with experts. . . . Give a columnist his say-so. . . . Don't be too sparing of people who try to use the paper. . . . Better reporting on the sports pages. . . . Profanity . . . would be quoted as spoken or not at all. . . . There should be more strife between the rags. . . . The bosses ought to tell daily book reviewers to make one enemy a week, taking a punch in the nose if necessary.''

In its "Talk of the Town" the sophisticated New Yorker was skeptical of Mrs. Nieman's gift: "She has picked the wrong kind of people to go to Harvard--reporters, editorial writers, special writers. . . . It is the publishers who hold back a newspaper. . . . Because publishers want to make a lot of money so that their widows can leave a million dollars to send somebody back to Harvard. Hearst went to Harvard, and he couldn't elevate a standard if it was rigged up with pulleys."

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