Sergeant-Editor Doster

There is no other weekly newspaper in America which in one short year has achieved so many kudos as the Panama Coast Artillery News. Last week, about to celebrate its first anniversary, the News had on hand congratulations from the President of the U.S., the President of Panama, Secretary Stimson, Chief of Staff Marshall, Comedians Lew Lehr and Eddie Cantor (Lehr: "Monkeys is the craziest people and so is the editorial staff of the P.C.A. News.").

Lehr's reference to monkeys was no figure of speech. One afternoon last month an anteater, a monkey and the editor of the News occupied the same office. This cozy spectacle did not confuse readers who dropped into the News office at Quarry Heights, the U.S. Army's headquarters in the Panama Canal Zone. Old friends of the editor, Master Sergeant Clay Doster, had no trouble whatever in identifying him.

Editor Doster, who was wounded in World War I, and holds several decorations, knows how to buck up the morale of the men in the remote, hard-driven Panama Coast Artillery Command (TIME, MAY 26). He puts on an act -- every day in person, once a week in the lively, mimeographed pages of the News. The monkey and the anteater are parts of the act. So is his official pseudonym in the News: El Toro Ferdiliza. And so are the screwy lines which stud Editor Doster's paper (OUR EDITORIAL POLICY: SLAPHAPPY. OUR MOTTO: "Blessed be he who bloweth hsi own horn, for his'n shall be blowed.").

Long used to handling Army publicity in the U.S., Sergeant Doster got out the first issue of the News last summer. Since then it has grown from 250 copies of eight pages, to a weekly circulation of 6,247 and 40 pages. In addition to the jungle outposts of the Panama Coast Artillery Command, the News also has a booming circulation in other Army outfits and among families and friends of Panama Coast Artillerymen. Subscribers, paying 25-c- to 50-c- per month, bought enough copies in April to give the News a net profit of $820 (which went into the soldiers' Athletic and Recreation Fund).

A War Department order recently forbade the News (and other Army publications) to identify units on duty in the Canal Zone. Caught by this instruction just before his deadline, Editor Doster remade his paper, slapped together a rough-house satire on censorship in general. Private Buford Carter, one of the News's self-trained staff artists, drew a lush nude, crossed out her mouth, breasts, belly and calves, and captioned it: SORRY, GANG-- THE NEW REGULATIONS PROHIBIT THE PUBLICATION OF PICTURES OF EQUIPMENT.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.