New Wave of Challengers

Wars, Presidents and newspapers have come and gone, and the columnists of yesterday still write on, as confidently as ever. Arthur Krock at 79, David Lawrence at 76, Walter Lippmann at 76, and Drew Pearson at 67 remain familiar if greying presences in the nation's press. Roscoe Drummond, 63, James Reston, 56, and Joseph Alsop, 55, have been around so long that they too seem part of the patriarchy. But the roster of challengers is growing fast.

The advance guard of new columnists began to appear a few years ago when Bill Buckley, 40, and Barry Goldwater, 56, took up their positions as spokesmen for the right, while Michael Harrington, 37, author of The Other America, moved in on the left, and the team of Rowland Evans and Robert Novak took up a position resolutely in the middle. In recent weeks, though, a fresh and eager file of other newspapermen and women, as well as public figures, have decided to try their hands at columns. A sampling:

Joseph Kraft, 41, a Washington-political commentator for Harper's, is writing a new thrice-weekly column on politics in the U.S. and abroad. He pays particular attention to the intricacies of political institutions and how they shape and misshape policies.

Carl Rowan, 40, returns to journalism after serving as Ambassador to Finland and director of USIA. He plans to avoid strictly racial topics in his thrice-weekly column, which deals with everything from what's wrong with U.S. foreign policy to what's wrong with present-day pop tunes.

Martin Luther King, 36, is concentrating on racial issues in his weekly column. Capitalizing on the evocative refrain from the speech he made at the civil rights march to Washington in 1963, he calls his column "My Dream." It is an expansive dream indeed. The column, his syndicate says, "will deal with the need for creative nonviolence around the globe, for a spiritual renaissance, for peace and for understanding, as well as for freedom from totalitarianism in all its forms, and dignity in Bogalusa and Harlem."

Novelist John Steinbeck, 63, will write a column when the mood strikes him as he travels about Europe. His subjects, he has told Long Island's Newsday, which will handle syndication, "might range from Irish fairies to the best way to throw rocks at Princess Margaret." Unlike most other columnists, Steinbeck worries about "how volcanically, how shatteringly fallible I can be."

Writing a weekly column, also for Newsday, and appropriately titled "From the Bridge," New York master builder and president of the recently concluded World's Fair, Robert Moses, 76, discusses what he likes best: bridges, superhighways and other public works. And what he likes least: his critics, whom he tells off in his customary salty fashion.

Clayton Fritchey, 61, a onetime editor of the New Orleans Item, left journalism to work in government, served Adlai Stevenson as a member of the U.S. mission to the United Nations. Now he returns to newspapers with a column on political subjects that promises to be "explosive."

Marianne Means, 31, who graduates from the Hearst White House beat to a thrice-weekly column, "Marianne Means' Washington," is by all odds the best looking of the new group. It was, in fact, her good looks that first brought her to the attention of President Kennedy, who asked Hearst to station her at the White House.

Jack O'Brian, 51, who gloried in making enemies during his 15 caustic years covering TV for Hearst's New York Journal-American, will probably make just as many in his new job. He takes over the "Voice of Broadway" gossip column from Dorothy Kilgallen, who died this month. Atra Baer, 38, replaces O'Brian.

Dorothy Manners, fiftyish, takes over Louella Parsons' Hollywood gossip column. She is ready for the job. She has assisted Louella for 30 years and has written the column herself for the past year because of Louella's failing health. Nonetheless, she modestly admits, "I feel a little bit like a buck private in a general's uniform."

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