The Good, Gay Times

When Turner Catledge, a good, lively reporter, became managing editor of the New York Times two years ago, he started a quiet revolution to liven up the nation's No. 1 paper. Among the changes: sharper, more concise writing, more feature stories, better pictures, TIMEstyle paragraph marks to break . up stories, sprightlier headlines. One means of communication with the Times's massive staff (20 editors, 600 reporters, 80 copy editors): Winners & Sinners, a lively, irreverent house organ originated by Assistant Managing Editor Ted Bernstein. Bernstein's "bulletin of second-guessing" raps staffers when they are heavyhanded, sloppy or inaccurate (without mentioning names), and cheers them when they are bright (mentioning names). "The Times" says Bernstein, 48, "doesn't have to be dull just because it's the Times."

"Fixing Kilt. Bernstein's most forceful argument for sprightliness is Winners & Sinners itself. When a Times headline said COAST OIL DIGGING URGED TO CUT DEBT, he replied: "Dig that crazy word . . . Oil wells are usually drilled rather than dug." Grammatical errors are listed under the head, "English the King wouldn't like" ("He had been ill for several months and had underwent a gall bladder operation six weeks ago," or "Then, after Jim Hearn had left a 2-1 victory in the nightcap slip away . . ."). A lively headline--MOCKTAIL TIXING KILT, COCKTAIL MIXING TILT WON BY--WHO WON 'AT OL' THING ANYWAY? --is listed under "Chuckle heads."

Writers are crisply advised to avoid cliches and never, never to use such tired words as "shambles" (a "scene of slaughter, not merely a wrecked place") or "hike" for a wage or price increase ("A hike is a tramp and a tramp is a bum and bum is the word for hike"). They are also warned against words that may trip up printers, e.g., towhead. Thus, one story in the Times said: "To bright, two-headed youngsters . . ." Wrote Bernstein: "Use 'blond,' 'flaxen-haired'--anything."

Plugging for less stuffy language, Bernstein noted "microcosm, merchandising, macrocosm and meteorology all in one tasteless sentence," and suggested Times-men write with "prep school kids in mind constantly. You'll need them to pay your salary by and by." After discovering "Thanksgiving has come and gone and Christmas is upon us and there doesn't seem to have been a single turkey dinner served up in the news columns 'with all the fixin's,'" Bernstein joyfully wrote: "Innkeeper, wine all around!" He also pounces on sloppy checking of names. When a story from Germany mentioned "Shepherd Stone," Bernstein noted tartly: "He used to work here [as assistant Sunday editor] and his name is Shepard."

Unlikely Comma. Winners & Sinners (circ. 1,000) has proved popular at the Times, goes to all the paper's bureaus (recently it slapped a foreign correspondent for beginning one of his dispatches in this gruesome fashion: "Unless comma which is deemed highly unlikely comma"). Journalism schools and newsmen outside the Times have also begun to ask for it. Bernstein hopes that it will eventually improve the Times's writing to the point where the "printer [can] delete that r in 'the good gray Times.'"

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