A Look at the British Press Council by John M
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1eman• orts September 1969 A Look at the British Press Council by John M. Harrison Edwin A. Lahey, January 11, 1902-July 17, 1969 by Louis M. Lyons Ed Lahey, Reporter by John S. Knight A Nieman Fellow at Harvard by Edwin A. Lahey of the Chicago Daily News 2 NiemanR~ports VOL. XXIII, NO. 3 Louis M. Lyons, Editor Emeritus . September 1969 -Dwight E. Sargent, Editor- -Tenney K. Lehman, Managing Editor- Editorial Board of the Society of Nieman Fellows Robert W. Brown Roy M. Fisher C. Ray Jenkins Sylvan Meyer Augusta Chronicle Chicago Daily News Alabama Journal Miami News Millard C. Browne Robert B. Frazier John Strohmeyer Robert Lasch Buffalo News Eugene Register-Guard Bethlehem Globe-Times St. Louis Post-Dispatch William B. Dickinson Thomas H. Griffith E. J. Paxton, Jr. Robert Giles Philadelphia Bulletin Life Magazine Paducah Sun-Democrat Knight Newspapers Tillman Durdin Rebecca Gross Harry T. Montgomery Smith Hempstone, Jr. New York Times Lock Haven Express Associated Press Washington Star William F. Mcilwain Alan Barth David Kraslow George Chaplin Newsday Washington Post Los Angeles Times Honolulu Advertiser Published quarterly by the Society of Nieman Fellows from 77 Dunster Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138. Subscription $3 a year. Second class postage paid at Boston, Massachusetts. The Lahey Legend The first section of this issue of Nieman Reports is devoted of Nieman Reports are pleased to present these comments on to the life of the late Edwin A. Lahey of the Knight News a brilliant career. papers. Ed was a newspaperman of national repute, a human As Louis Lyons said in a letter accompanying his Lahey being of warmth and friendliness, and a grandfather as article, ". Lahey created a Nieman tradition, and his gentle with his grandchildren as he was tough in his dedica death closes a first chapter. This is a landmark." Even as his tion to the truth. He was one of nine journalists appointed as death brings an era to an end, the memory of his life inspires a Nieman Fellow in the first class at Harvard University in a new one. Those associated with the Nieman program are 1938-39. especially proud of Ed's contributions to the development of No one is better qualified to write the history of Ed's the Fellowships, but we are equally proud of the Lahey ex Nieman year than his colleague in the inaugural group, amples of professional excellence that prodded reporters Louis M. Lyons, a reporter for The Boston Globe and Cura everywhere toward higher standards. We cheer his greatness tor of the Nieman Fellowships from 1939 to 1964. No one as a newspaperman, and cherish his goodness as a family can assess more knowledgeably Ed's talents, personal and man and friend. A description of his life, like Ed's descrip professional, than his close friend and boss for many years~ tion of his Nieman year, "seriously taxes my store of ad JohnS. Knight. No one can reflect more poignantly on that jectives," but on the following pages, Louis M. Lyons, John first Nieman year-Dr. James Bryant Conant referred to it S. Knight and Edwin A. Lahey relate with eloquence the as "a dubious experiment"-than Ed Lahey himself, who legend and legacy of an extraordinary man. helped to end doubts about this association between the world of journalism and the groves of academe. The editors -Dwight E. Sargent NIEMAN REPORTS 3 Edwin A. Lahey January II, I902-July I7, I969 By Louis M. Lyons Ed Lahey made an indelible impression on Harvard and "Where were you born?" left a legend that created a tradition for the Nieman Fellows. "Right here in Boston." "The ivy's got me," he wired back to his city editor upon "And where were you educated?" arriving in Cambridge the fall of 1938, one of the first "Right here at Harvard." Nieman group. "That's the payoff," Eddie murmured resignedly. But it was the other way. In Lahey the academic com Having to talk to a Law School club, I found myself in munity realized its romantic notion of the newspaperman: troduced as another of the Nieman Fellows. "You remember irreverent, skeptical, wise-cracking, his clipped speech our last speaker, Mr. Lahey, told us 'The journalist is a redolent of the sidewalks of Chicago but expressing the prostitute by profession but a lawyer from choice.' " wisdom of the street. A generation after Lahey's initiation Almost 30 years after Lahey's Nieman year I was inter of Harvard into the glamorous world of journalism, a dis viewing Prof. George W ald on television on the day of his tinguished Harvard professor, serving with Ed on a selecting Nobel award. I told him the Nieman Fellows always said committee, asked to be seated next him on the plane. "I he made science exciting. George tried to suppress a chuckle. want to hear him talk some more." It was always an ex Afterwards he explained, "I had to laugh at your mention of perience to hear Lahey talk. Pungent, colorful, epigram the Nieman Fellows. It recalled Ed Lahey and the way he matic, he reduced situations to pithy sentences. could puncture pomposity and get down to cases with the A pixieish figure with puckish expression and a beatific jolt of his quips." grin, he was disarming, irresistible even when outrageous Puncturing pomposity was a Lahey specialty. But under Laheyisms persisted at Harvard. "Now if you could just sum neath he was all sentiment, and he was sentimental about that up in about 2,000 well-chosen words," he responded to his own craft. Inveigled into a talk to a conference on Prof. Alvin Hansen after a comprehensive analysis of the journalism, he began: state of the economy in 1938. When Prof. L. J. Henderson "It is a time-honored custom for the out-of-town speaker regally denied the right of Fortune Magazine to explore the to tell you what's wrong with newspapers. Forgive me for inwards of private enterprise, Lahey innocently requested, flouting tradition, but I don't think there's a goddamned "May I ask you just two questions, Professor?" thing wrong with newspapers .... If journalism had not "Certainly." rescued me from the working classes I would have today 4 N I E M A N R E . P 0 R T S about 40 years semonty on the Chicago & Northwestern race tracks for a year, which would not have seemed an in Railroad. I have never for a moment regretted the day I had congruous combination to him. He retained a skeptical a chance to become a reporter ...." affection for both. Mary McGrory says he gave his race Lahey became legendary for his scoops and for the origin track winnings to Dorothy Day for her Catholic Worker. ality of his leads. When Richard Loeb was killed by a fellow In St. Louis he transferred his part-time studies to George prisoner he had approached, Lahey reported: "Despite his Washington University. The next year he got a job with erudition, Richard Loeb ended a sentence with a proposi the Associated Press in Chicago and he studied then at the tion." University of Chicago and later at Loyola. So much for the Lahey went to work right after grammar school at 14. It brink of illiteracy. is true that he wrote of his Nieman year at Harvard that "I In 1929 he got onto the Chicago Daily News where one of was snatched from the very brink of illiteracy." But Lahey's his early assignments was an investigation of a shakedown life is so much entwined with legend that it is necessary to racket of Chicago contractors on Federal jobs. Then he cov get back of this truth. He did not come to Harvard an un ered the murder of Jake Lingle, Chicago Tribune reporter educated man but a self-educated man. He had already who proved to have gangland connections. developed a distinctive style and he was then, at 36, a fore The next two years Lahey was reporting depression bank most labor reporter. I asked him once how he trained failures, the fall of AI Capone, the collapse of the Insull himself to write. He said that as a freight handler, in the power empire. In 1934 John Dillinger was his story and in long spaces between trains, he used to read Dickens and 1936 the prison murder of Richard Loeb. then took to "trying to write sentences as long as Dickens's." Lahey moved by choice into labor reporting with a sense That "as long as" was quite out of character with his of pioneering when the CIO arose out of the steelworkers succinct writing. But he had absorbed the color and vitality organizing committee in 1936. Phil Murray, first head of the of Dickens. CIO, became a close friend. Chicago was the scene of some When I mentioned to him a beautiful article in his paper of the most brutal strikes and strike breaking in autos and by Donald Culross Peattie on the trees of Illinois, Lahey steel as labor fought for recognition in the basic industries. beamed. "Wasn't it great. I suggested that." Seeing my Lahey covered bloody picket lines and learned the tactics surprise that this man of the sidewalks would have such a and strategy of labor and anti-labor. He became one of the feeling for trees, Lahey explained that when W ashirigton best informed of labor reporters and, to the office, his stories politics got him down, he · packed a knapsack and took a were noted for their objectivity. When Col.