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THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, AuguST 14, 2021
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
DERRICK DePLEDGE
Editor
Founded in 1873
SHANNON ARLINT
Circulation Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
WRITER’S NOTEBOOK
The journalist politicians feared
f you work aggressively as a columnist in Washing-
ton, D.C., people will come after your job.
Pacific Northwest senators went after my clients
twice while I was a correspondent for regional newspa-
pers from 1978 to 1987. For the columnist Drew Pear-
son, it happened all the time, over a career that spanned
presidencies from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon.
Pearson was a multimedia journalist well before
every newsroom required multiplatform reporting. He
delivered a daily column from Washing-
ton to newspapers across the nation, and
he broadcast weekly radio and televi-
sion shows. His continental reach made
him a powerful political force. On many
occasions, he was also a political actor,
trying to broker outcomes.
Donald Ritchie has written a compel-
STEVE
ling biography, titled “The Columnist:
FORRESTER
Leaks, Lies, and Libel in Drew Pear-
son’s Washington.” In this and another
book, Ritchie has shown his readers that knowing how
the Washington press corps works can be as interesting
and revealing as knowing how Congress works — or in
the present day, how Congress does not work. He is for-
merly the U.S. Senate historian.
While Pearson will be an unknown figure to many
today, they might remember the name of his successor,
Jack Anderson, and his weekly column in Parade mag-
azine. The striking thing about both of these journalists
is what you might call their ethical or religious under-
pinnings. In newsrooms today, we don’t expect to learn
reporters’ religious backgrounds. But Pearson was a
Quaker and Anderson a Mormon.
Among the values of this biography are its short, but
detailed, histories of the McCarthy era, the dark side
of the Eisenhower administration and Harry Truman’s
beneficence to old friends.
Ritchie’s biography is rich with detail of Pearson’s
dealings with the formidable FBI director J. Edgar
Hoover. Pearson used Hoover and Hoover used Pearson
to an extent well beyond how such relationships work
today. After Pearson’s column carried unflattering cov-
erage of the presidential spouse Bess Truman, Harry
Truman gave the columnist an Oval Office scalding that
Pearson said was the worst beating he’d taken.
Pearson’s aggressive tactics were precursors to suc-
cessors such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and
Seymour Hersh. But the breadth of Pearson’s involve-
ment in politics and government was beyond anything
I
Encyclopedia Britannica
Drew Pearson speaking to a crowd gathered at City Hall
Plaza in New York City to greet the Friendship Train in 1947.
ANy JOuRNALIST TOdAy
REAdINg THIS BIOgRAPHy WILL
RECOgNIZE THE PRESSuRES
THAT COME WITH THE JOB
– THEN ANd NOW, ON THE
NATIONAL SCENE OR IN SMALLER
MARKETS ACROSS AMERICA.
THE COLUMNIST
‘The Columnist: Leaks, Lies, and Libel in Drew Pear-
son’s Washington’ by Donald A. Ritchie
Oxford University Press
that would follow.
Both he and Anderson were witnesses at a congres-
sional hearing. In his reckoning with U.S. Sen. Joseph
McCarthy, Pearson took a physical beating from the
demagogic senator while in the cloakroom at Wash-
ington’s exclusive Sulgrave Club. During the Kennedy
administration, Pearson and his wife traveled to Russia,
where he interviewed Russian Premier Nikita Khrush-
chev. Upon his return, Pearson was invited to speak
with CIA analysts about what he had learned behind the
Iron Curtain. His enabling of Lyndon Johnson prompted
the slur that he was “Lyndon’s lackey.”
The columnist maintained a large staff of legmen
from the office of his Georgetown home. His wealth
afforded him a farm on the banks of the Potomac. He
made five-figure settlements in libel lawsuits.
Ritchie offers us a window on a phenomenon we’ll
not likely see again. Nor will we see the eras that fos-
tered Pearson’s empire of influence. But any journal-
ist reading this biography will recognize the pressures
that come with the job — then and now, on the national
scene and in smaller markets across America.
Steve Forrester, the former editor and publisher of
The Astorian, is the president and CEO of EO Media
group.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Obscene
bscene: Offensive to moral princi-
ples, repugnant …
When I was a kid, obscene meant that
you were looking a pictures of people
without clothing.
The president of the U.S. makes
$400,00 a year; U.S. senators, $174,000
a year; teachers, $64,000 a year; police
officers, $60,000 a year; and one NBA
player, $46 million a year? Now that is
what I call obscene!
CHUCK MEYER
Astoria
O
A July evening
olumbia River, July evening: The
river, a huge theater with clouds
rising from the horizon like a biblical
backdrop. The forbidding clouds a wall
of dark; but at the very top, a patch of
light blue mixed with the yellow of the
sun that set an hour ago.
The river mirrors the sky, a
yellow gold on the top line of small
waves. Dark blue just underneath the
gold shine; beneath that deep, dark
black.
Storm clouds, running fast, from the
south-southwest. Separated from one
another by brief patches of blue-gold.
The bottom of the clouds dark blue,
a shade away from black, heavy with
rain. Seen from the Oregon side, look-
ing north, the clouds dropping their rain
load on Naselle, Washington.
In the midst of this grandeur, a
freighter, 500 feet long, small in com-
parison, insignificant, heading upstream.
JIM HALLAUX
Astoria
C
Astoria, the next Portland?
recent national news report noted
that Burgerville’s CEO cited dete-
riorating conditions in the surrounding
area as a reason for a restaurant closure
in the southeast Portland neighborhood
where I grew up.
The CEO stated, “There is a human-
itarian crisis happening throughout our
region, and we need to come together
around solutions.” I feel sorry for a
childhood friend who currently lives in
my old house, as he and his family have
to witness the deterioration of a once
carefree place to live.
I’m not sure if I’m sad or angry about
the current condition of my old stomp-
ing grounds, but one thing is for sure:
The situation has occurred from poor
A
LETTERS WELCOME
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number. You will be contacted to
confirm authorship. All letters are
subject to editing for space, gram-
mar and factual accuracy. Only two
letters per writer are allowed each
month. Letters written in response
political leadership over the past few
decades. Some blame must go to the
voters, who keep voting for the pol-
to other letter writers should address
the issue at hand and should refer to
the headline and date the letter was
published. Discourse should be civil.
Send via email to editor@dailyasto-
rian.com, online at bit.ly/astorianlet-
ters, in person at 949 Exchange St.
in Astoria or mail to Letters to the
Editor, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR.,
97103.
iticians who allow my hometown to
become a national disgrace.
But Portland’s “humanitarian cri-
sis” stems from civic leaders who cater
to unhealthy social behaviors that make
the Portland metro area unlivable for
the taxpaying citizens, and financially
unsound for business owners to operate.
I mention the Burgerville story, as I
believe it relates to two articles recently
published in The Astorian, where the
needle exchange program in the county
reached 1 million syringes dispensed, and
homeless-related calls to the police have
doubled.
I’ve lived in the Astoria area for over
30 years, yet I have kept track of how
Portland has fallen apart. I just hope city
and county leaders don’t allow Astoria to
become a national joke.
MATT JANES
Jeffers Gardens