Red's Reward

Into Tampa, Fla. last week swept the Senate's Kefauver committee on interstate crime. The committee was not there to take Tampa's winter sun; it was in Florida to investigate reports that Tampa was the center of a crime syndicate that ran a dope-smuggling ring and a lottery with a take of $20 million a year. For the Tampa Tribune (circ. 101,051), the committee's arrival was a fine acknowledgment of the paper's three-year-old crusade against Florida crime. In the course of its campaign, the Tribune had toppled four state officials from office, helped bring some 50 gamblers to court, and with the help of other Florida papers, all but stopped slot-machine gambling in the state.

Last week, with help from the Tribune, the committee put on the record some facts that the Tribune had long wanted to print but dared not, because of the danger of a libel suit. One witness testified that Sheriff Hugh Culbreath of Hillsborough County (which includes Tampa) had received campaign contributions from one of the city's most notorious underworld hoodlums. In its coverage of the hearings (30 columns the first day), the Tribune pulled no punches, despite the fact that Sheriff Culbreath's son had been married to the daughter of Tribune Publisher J. C. Council only a few days before.

Campaign Funds. Sparkplug of the Tribune's anticrime campaign is redheaded Managing Editor V. M. (for Virgil Miller) Newton, 46, a Tribune staffer for 21 years. "Red" Newton started his crusade in 1947, when almost all of Tampa's municipal offices were taken over by a slate of candidates supported by Tampa's underworld. Newton sent out a squad of his staffers to find out how the election had been swung. Led by Reporter Jock Murray, a well-groomed, Nova Scotia-born Scot who looks more like a Wall Street banker than a crusading newsman, the Tribune's men put together a series of 16 stories exposing Tampa's gambling and crime syndicate. The Tribune found that the syndicate had poured $100,000 into the election.

When one of Tampa's top hoodlums was killed by five slugs from a .38-cal. gun, reporters Jock Murray and Paul Wilder persuaded his angry relatives to tell all they knew. Result: a new series of stories telling how the syndicate worked, who ran it, and how payoffs were made to unnamed local officials. (The evidence was later turned over to the committee.) Then Managing Editor Newton broadened his crusade to the rest of the state.

Slot Spots. In Jacksonville, Jock Murray thumbed through 8,000 federal license records and uncovered 627 illegal slot machines in Florida.* The Tribune printed the names of the owners. Other Florida papers (notably Miami's Herald and News'), which had long conducted off & on campaigns against crime, took inspiration from the Tribune and stepped up their crusades. Under pressure, Governor Lansing Warren fired two sheriffs and two constables and warned Florida's police to crack down on gambling.

The Tribune does not plan to ease up in its crusade until it finishes what it started out to do--clean up Tampa. Managing Editor Newton takes the long view on the duty of a newspaper. Said he: "Today's scoop is in tomorrow's ashcan, but a job done for public betterment lives long."

* Though slot machines are illegal in most states (including Florida), owners generally pay the $100 federal license fee to avoid entanglement with U.S. tax collectors.

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