The New Yorker's Choice

Up on the bulletin boards in The New Yorker's drab Manhattan office last week went a notice: "William Shawn has accepted the position of editor of The New Yorker, effective today." The announcement, signed by Raoul Fleischmann, the publishing company's president and largest stockholder, came as no surprise. As second in command under the late editor, Harold Ross, 44-year-old Shawn was his natural successor, although outwardly he is as different from Ross as The New Yorker is from the National Geographic.

A small (5 ft. 5 1/2 in.), pink-cheeked man who wears a button-front sweater with his Brooks Brothers suit, Shawn has a reputation for politeness and tact that is almost as legendary as Ross's volcanic temper. "No one," says a friend, "has yet gotten through a door behind him." Editor Shawn never swears or raises his voice. He works up to 14 hours a day as quietly as a bank clerk, carries home a pile of work to his Fifth Avenue apartment. For relaxation, he plays hot jazz on the piano and reads four or five books a week.

Gentle Suasion. Where Ross peppered his writers with long or acid queries, Shawn gets what he wants by gentle suasion. When he likes an article he often calls the author--even late at night--to tell him so. But as editors, the only deep difference between Ross and Shawn, says one writer, "is that Shawn is about 100 decibels quieter." Shawn has the same passion as Ross for facts and accuracy, and is so precise that even a craftsman like S. N. Behrman says: "I like to do a New Yorker piece once a year just to get the benefit of Shawn's editing."

No New Yorker himself, Shawn was born on Chicago's South Side, the son of a cutlery dealer. After two years at the University of Michigan and three months as reporter on the Las Vegas (N. Mex.) Optic (present circ. 4,613), Shawn got-married, settled in Chicago and freelanced. But in New Mexico he had seen The New Yorker and had become "infatuated with it." He went to New York in 1932, planning to write a book about the magazine. Instead, he landed a job as a reporter for "Talk of the Town.'"

Fact & Fantasy. In his first two years, he hardly laid eyes on Ross. But Ross had his eye on Shawn. He made him head of the "idea" department, which suggested many of the magazine's articles and cartoons, four years later boosted him to "managing editor for fact," i.e., everything but fiction and cartoons. Only once, in 1936, did Shawn write a piece for the magazine, a wry fantasy called "Catastrophe," in which New York City was completely destroyed by a meteor and quickly forgotten by everyone.

Shawn plans no changes in The New Yorker formula. Circulation is at a peak 343,580, and net profits, which were $630,000 in 1950, are estimated to be down only slightly for 1951 because of higher taxes and costs.

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