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The Newspaper: Keeper of the Community Conscience Item Type text; Pamphlet Authors Heiskell, John Netherland Publisher The University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ) Rights Copyright © Arizona Board of Regents Download date 07/10/2021 03:16:55 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/583020 5: nnv)s7=gsnb-fne The John Peter finger Award 1!?' 1964 (0) -: _ , ., k^-:.: - ! tut:: 1 ') ..t L t : I - .. c; ' ! i/ , 1' nr , / : s'. _.--. -., . - ..tii' ,¡ \ \ THE NEWSPAPER: KEEPER OF THE COMMUNITY CONSCIENCE An Address by John Netherland Heiskell ag;g5nagagn ;s,ag agaas!L THE JOHN PETER ZENGER AWARD FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS Number 11 THE NEWSPAPER: KEEPER OF THE COMMUNITY CONSCIENCE An Address by JOHN NETHERLAND HEISKELL Editor and President, The Arkansas Gazette THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA PRESS Tucson, Arizona Previously Honored 1963 James B. Reston, Chief, Washington Bureau, The New York Times 1962 John C. Colburn, Managing Editor, Richmond (Va.) Times -Dispatch 1961 Clark R. Mollenhoff, Washington, Cowles Publications 1960 Virgil M. Newton, Jr., Managing Editor, Tampa (Fla.) Tribune 1959 Herbert Brucker, Editor, Hartford Courant 1958 John E. Moss, Chairman of House Government Information subcommittee 1957 James R. Wiggins, Vice President, Executive Editor of the Washington, D.C. Post and Times Herald 1956 James S. Pope, Executive Editor, Louisville Courier Journal 1955 Basil L. Walters, Executive Editor, Chicago Daily News and Knight newspapers 1954 Palmer Hoyt, Editor and Publisher, Denver Post FOREWORD I thank you for the opportunity of being with you again in this annual meeting of the Arizona Newspapers Association. I extend my personal regards as well as the greetings of the University of Arizona to all of you. It is always a pleasant and stimulating occasion each year when the University of Arizona, with the cooperation of your Association, honors the recipient of the University's John Peter Zenger Freedom of the Press Award and thereby makes an important contribution to the perpet- uation of one of the basic rights of the American people. The importance of the action here today has national, and indeed world -wide, significance. The tribute we pay to a courageous Southern editor exemplifies our contin- uing dedication to the freedom of the press, one of the several basic freedoms that contribute so abundantly to the strength of this nation. Nominations for this award are made by a committee composed of the previous winners of this distinction. Therefore, since the award was established in 1954, there were this year ten members on the nominating committee. The recipient is then selected from the nominees by secret ballot of sixty outstanding editors and publishers throughout the nation. Today we make the eleventh Zenger award to an editor who risked all that he had in fighting for his prin- Is] JOHN PETER ZENGER AWARD ciples and for what he knew was right, despite the bitterest opposition of the most influential forces in his commun- ity, state and region. John Netherland Heiskell has been editor and presi- dent of the Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock since 1902. Born in Rogersville, Tennessee, in 1872, he has been a newspaperman ever since he graduated from the Uni- versity of Tennessee in 1893. He served as reporter on the Knoxville Tribune, city editor of the Knoxville Sen- tinel and the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and with the Associated Press until he began his long association with the Arkansas Gazette just after the turn of the century. During his long and distinguished career, while he directed the fortunes of his newspaper during two world wars, a great depression, and the advent of the nuclear age, he never stood aside on any issue when he believed he was in the right. In 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval E. Faubus called out the National Guard to defy Federal court orders to integrate Central High School in Little Rock. It was then Editor Heiskell made a decision that seemed to threaten the continued existence of his newspaper. He opposed the action of Governor Faubus and called for obedience to the court's order for school integration. Community reaction against his newspaper was violent. Although the Gazette had fought against the militant segregationists for a number of years, it was now faced with boycott and a torrent of bitter, unending abuse. It has been estimated that more than $2 million was lost as circulation and advertising dwindled before [4] FOREWORD inflamed public prejudice. But Mr. Heiskell, who had never been afraid to uphold a cause he considered right, continued to speak for reason and justice. Eventually the Little Rock schools reopened and tensions eased. The Arkansas Gazette slowly began to regain its lost circulation and its pre- eminent position in the community. It also won an honored place among the newspapers of the world. In 1958 the newspaper received the most coveted Pulitzer Prize - the gold medal for meritorious public service. The Pulitzer citation stated, "The newspaper's fearless and completely objective coverage, plus its reasoned and moderate policy, did much to restore calmness and order to an overwrought com- munity, reflecting great credit on its editors and manage- ment." In addition to his unique and brilliant career as editor and president, Mr. Heiskell has demonstrated from the time he was graduated from the University of Ten- nessee in 1893 a deep and abiding interest in a wide range of contemporary problems of American society. His coun- sel has been widely sought and he has served in many areas of human affairs. He served by appointment during an interim period as United States Senator in 1913; he is president of the board of trustees of the Little Rock Public Library; a former chairman of the Little Rock City Planning Com- mission and a former member of the State Planning Board. He was second vice president of the Associated Press in 1926 -27. [5] JOHN PETER ZENGER AWARD In 1957 he received a citation from the American Library Association as an outstanding library trustee. He was recipient of a medal and citation from Syracuse Uni- versity School of Journalism for "Distinguished Service to Journalism" in 1958, and was cited in the same year by the Columbia University Graduate School of Jour- nalism for "Singular Journalistic Performance in the Pub- lic Interest" and also, in the same year, received the Lovejoy Award from Colby College. He was elected a fellow of Sigma Delta Chi in 1958 and received for the Arkansas Gazette the 1958 Freedom House Award. In 1962 he was granted the University of Missouri School of Journalism Distinguished Service Medal. Mr. Heiskell, it is a great pleasure and a very dis- tinct honor for me, both personally and on behalf of the University of Arizona and in cooperation with the Ari- zona Newspapers Association, to present to you, a great and distinguished American, the 1964 John Peter Zenger Award and to hand to you an album containing greetings and felicitations from many distinguished colleagues in journalism throughout the nation. Office of the President Richard A. Harvill The University of Arizona Tucson, January, 1965 [6] 1964 John Netherland Heiskell Editor and President, Arkansas Gazette Any journalist who receives the honor of the John Peter Zenger Award should feel that he has been sum- moned to emulate, so far as may be in his power, the courage and unflinching resolution of the eighteenth - century editor who made his name immortal. It is as though there had been laying on of hands, and . the man on whom the honor had been bestowed had solemnly been charged to show himself worthy to wear the white robe of courage and dedication. It is with such a sense of obligation that I gratefully receive the Zenger Award, as I have previously received from Colby College the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award. The one was so heroic in fulfilling his journalistic mission that he fired his righteous editorial salvos from the jail where he had been so unjustly imprisoned. The other was a martyr to a free press, and his ex- ample should, to adapt some words of Abraham Lincoln, [7] JOHN PETERZ.ENGER AWARD inspire us to increased devotion to the cause to which he gave the last full measure of devotion. I hope I may be absolved of self -praise and of resort to promotional effort if I recount the events that led to the award that I am receiving today; and if I tell the part that was played by the Arkansas Gazette, of which I have been editor for more than half a century. I am convinced that the deplorable Little Rock school trouble of 1957 had its origin in a certain political situation. Since the end of the Reconstruction era in 1874, only one man had been elected governor of Arkansas for more than two two -year terms. He was Jeff Davis, a genius in the practice of politics (not a relative of the president of Confederate Governor a master of the arts and artifices of the hustings. He could carry political appeal and persuasion to the point of sorcery. No man who contended against him was his match or equal. In subsequent years more than one governor had sought a third term, but none had succeeded in crossing what had become the deadline of Arkansas politics. Conditions conspired in Gov. Orval E. Faubus' second term to give him his political opportunity. He needed an emotional issue that would stir people as they could not be moved by any recital of accomplishments the incumbent executive might claim for his adminis- tration or by any of the familiar political appeals. The United States Supreme Court had decreed the end of racial segregation in public schools.