Contemptuous Item

Back in 1911 a tousle-haired, 18-year-old country boy named Huey Long, from the "redneck" hills of Louisiana's Winn Parish, walked into the dingy Union Street office of the New Orleans Item one day and asked for a job. Said Marshall Ballard, editor of the Item then & now: "I'll give you $10 a week." Said Huey, grinning as he walked out : "That's not enough. Keep your eye on me--I'm going places."

Huey Pierce Long did go places. He went to the Governor's Mansion up in Baton Rouge, to the U. S. Senate in Washington, might just possibly have gone to the White House if he had not been shot in his own skyscraper capitol in 1935. Huey never had much use for a free press. He reserved State advertising, State printing for papers that backed his cause--including Louisiana Progress, which he owned himself. Once he tried to tax every daily in Louisiana out of existence, but the U. S. Supreme Court held his act unconstitutional.

Last week Huey's feud against "lyin' newspapers" (still carried on by Brother Earl Kemp Long, now running to succeed himself as Governor) exploded in a court order for contempt proceedings against the New Orleans Item--the same Item that once offered Huey a job. Marshall Ballard's paper got in trouble when it used some ugly words in connection with some of Long's followers. But the Item was only saying openly what other New Orleans papers have said by implication for years.

New Orleans' oldest daily newspaper (founded 1837) is the morning Times-Picayune, and no competitor has ever seriously challenged its dominance. The Picayune* sent George Wilkins Kendall, reputedly the first U. S. war correspondent, to Vera Cruz in 1847, published the peace treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo before the President of the U. S. even saw it. Before there was a telegraph, the Picayune used to set up stories in type on steamers bound from Mobile to New Orleans, send them galloping through the streets to press by team and wagon.

Hot Town. The afternoon Item was started as a cooperative venture in 1877, fell into the hands of West Virginia-born James Mcllhany Thomson 30 years later, while its editor was serving time in jail for libel. Publisher Thomson hired scholarly Marshall Ballard (who had been a fellow student at Johns Hopkins) to edit the Item.

In 1924 the Item brought out a morning edition called the Tribune. Founded to help Publisher Thomson fight the Times-Picayune, the Tribune gave New Orleans its fourth daily (third was the Item's afternoon rival, the States) and made it one of the hottest competitive newspaper towns in the country. Within six years the Tribune was close behind the States in circulation, the Item and Tribune together outsold the Times-Picayune.

Publisher of the States (and of three other Louisiana papers) was the late Colonel Robert Ewing, a rich, mustachioed, onetime telegraph operator. In 1928 Colonel Ewing supported Huey Long for Governor, and Long won. On the day of Long's inauguration a messenger brought him a note from Colonel Ewing, asking him to add a line or two to his speech. Standing on the steps of the old State House, Huey read it, muttered "- --!'' and tore it up.

A few months later (after Long got rid of various political friends of Ewing's) the States dropped Huey. Subsequently Publisher Thomson's Item and Tribune decided to back him. They stuck with Long and his successors for nine years while the Tribune's circulation soared to 47,817, then relapsed; the Item hit a peak of 67,603 and likewise receded. Meanwhile, Colonel Ewing died. Publisher Thomson tried to buy the States and merge it with his Item. Instead, to his bitter surprise, the Times-Picayune got the States for an afternoon edition.

Last year the Tribune's circulation was down to 28,614, less than when it started before Huey's rise to power. The Item (64,894) and the States (46,818) were approximately where they stood in 1924. But the Times-Picayune had risen from 78,571 to 111,529, was still New Orleans' favorite newspaper.

Frost. It was a States reporter who last June unearthed the scandal in Louisiana's administration that sent President James Monroe Smith of Louisiana State University to prison, and so far has brought four other convictions in New Orleans alone on charges of fraud. One day Reporter Meigs Frost (who once got honorable mention for a Pulitzer Prize) heard that WPA materials from the University's carpentry shops were going into a private home at Metairie, a rich New Orleans suburb in adjoining Jefferson Parish.

Out to Metairie with a photographer went Meigs Frost. They crawled through weeds and bushes on a neighboring lot, snapped pictures of a university truck delivering millwork. The house was for a close friend of Governor Richard Webster Leche. Two days later, after poring over deeds and checking facts, the States broke Reporter Frost's front-page story. Next day the Times-Picayune followed suit. Fortnight later, Governor Leche resigned, and his Lieutenant Governor, Huey's brother Earl Long, took his place.

With Louisiana in an uproar and Federal investigators hastening down from Washington, the Item abandoned Huey's followers to their fate. Suddenly the Item came out with an editorial platform calling for punishment of "all who have stolen from State and Federal Governments," rigid State economy, honest elections. Next day, in an editorial headed At Long Last, the States sarcastically welcomed the Item "to the fold of those who are battling to save Louisiana from political racketeers, political thieves and corruptionists."

Silent Shushan. What got the Item in trouble last week was a case that opened in Louisiana's Federal court against Abraham Lazard Shushan (who once backed Huey Long financially, in return got his name on New Orleans' palatial Shushan Airport) and four other defendants accused by the Government of using the mails to defraud. According to the grand jury's indictment, they shared a fee of $496,000 on a false claim that they had saved the Orleans Levee Board $2,000,000 in a bond-refunding operation.

Before trial even began, defense attorneys last month tried to persuade Judge Wayne G. Borah (nephew of U. S. Senator William Edgar Borah) to cite all four New Orleans papers for contempt, claiming that newspaper stories and cartoons had publicly judged the case in advance, prejudiced the minds of prospective jurors, created an impression that Shushan was wrongfully acquitted in a previous trial for income-tax evasion. Judge Borah reserved judgment on these accusations, had rendered no decision when the fraud trial began last week.

Up jumped Defense Attorney Hugh M. Wilkinson (a former Times-Picayune police reporter) on the second day of trial, waving aloft a copy of that morning's Tribune. On the front page was a bold headline which read:

'BRIBE' LEGAL,

SAYS SHUSHAN

Roared Lawyer Wilkinson: "Your Honor knows that Mr. Shushan has not opened his mouth in this court. And I, as his counsel, . . . have not referred to a 'bribe'. . .. We ask that Your Honor declare a mistrial." Judge Borah overruled the motion, took under advisement another contempt petition.

But when the Item's noon edition came out two days later with a story in which the Government was quoted as having charged Shushan, "when president of the Levee Board," with taking a "bribe," Judge Borah's patience was at an end. Abe Shushan had not been president of the Levee Board when its bonds were refunded, and the Government had not entered any charge of bribery. A new motion for a mistrial was overruled. But this time Judge Borah ordered U. S. Attorney Rene Adams Viosca to file contempt proceedings against the Item.

Responsible for the story, said New Orleans newsmen, was a rewrite man who misunderstood an Item reporter's telephone account of proceedings.

*Named for the 6 1/4-c- Creole coin that paid for a copy on the street.

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