Soapbox Derby

New oracle in chief at the Post

Philip Geyelin, the Washington Post's Pulitzer-prizewinning editorialist, often said that Meg Greenfield, his deputy, was "so good she can run the page without me." Little did he know. Last week Greenfield, 48, replaced Geyelin, 56, as editor of the paper's editorial page, one of the most influential soapboxes in American journalism.

The abrupt ouster of Geyelin (pronounced Jay-lin) came as a stunning surprise to him and nearly everyone else at the Post, where intramural politics is followed more avidly than the paler version practiced on Capitol Hill. As was the case with almost every top-level personnel change at the paper in recent years, there was immediate speculation that Executive Editor Ben Bradlee had "got him." The New York Times reported differences in "management policies" between Bradlee and Geyelin. Other handicappers noted that Geyelin's star may have faded when his chief patron, Post Chairman Katharine Graham, 61, stepped down as publisher last January in favor of Son Donald, 33--and that, apparently, is closest to the truth. Donald Graham simply felt that Geyelin was beginning to run out of steam.

"There isn't any villain here," says an authoritative Post insider. "Don isn't the villain. Ben didn't get Phil. Meg didn't get Phil." Adds a Post editorial writer: "He was just in a rut. The writers thought he had grown stale. It was a question of getting more zip into things."

During Geyelin's eleven-year stewardship, the Post's editorial columns became what many students of the genre consider to be the country's best, or very close to it: lively, tightly reasoned, well informed and elegantly crafted. Indeed, the Post has for years generally outthought and outinfluenced the archrival New York Times, though veteran Timesman Max Frankel has livened that paper's orotund and occasionally murky editorial page since he became its editor in 1977.

A graduate of Smith College and a Pulitzer winner herself (in 1978 for commentary), Seattle-born Greenfield was hired by Geyelin himself in 1968 after eleven years with Reporter magazine, and became his deputy in 1970. She plans to continue her fortnightly Newsweek column while presiding over the Post's eight editorial writers. No drastic shifts of policy are expected under Greenfield, who describes herself as a "moderate centrist liberal," similar to her predecessor in ideology. "She's rather conservative on fiscal issues but not on human rights," says Post Reporter Myra MacPherson, a good friend. Enthuses George Will, the paper's conservative columnist: "She has better judgment than anyone I've known in Washington."

Popular among her colleagues, Greenfield, who is single, is regarded as brainy but accessible. "She has a fabulous, deep, lusty laugh," says Post Writer Sally Quinn. "If we were still 16 and having slumber parties, she's the first person I'd have. I've seen her wipe out five men in a discussion of nuclear war, but she's a good old girl too." Geyelin, a former diplomatic correspondent at the Wall Street Journal, will spend a year finishing a book about President Carter's foreign policy, then return to the Post as a columnist or special writer. "I think a publisher is entitled to pick his editors," he says nobly. "I have no hard feelings.''

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