Word: columnists
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Even the deftest of writers might be excused for a little nervous clearing of the throat, perspiration on the palms and other involuntary manifestations of the trembles at the assignment: a cover story on Russell Baker, the humor columnist who writes so deftly himself that he won this year's Pulitzer Prize for commentary. But Contributor John Skow did not flinch. Says Skow: "I've followed Baker's column since he started it 17 years ago. You can tell merely by reading him that he's a very approachable...
Skow approached Baker at his Nantucket Island retreat, where he found the columnist on his knees, plucking crab grass from a walk, and looking every bit the compulsive suburbanite sometimes mirrored in his column. Skow spent two days with the Baker family. He toured the island, shared the view from a widow's walk atop the house, and discovered that his 17-year impression of Baker was correct. Reports Skow: "He is not a performer. He is a man who lives very much inside his own head, a thoughtful conversationalist who would just as soon listen as talk...
...interviewed several of Baker's colleagues at the New York Times, close friends like NBC Anchorman John Chancellor and Author David Halberstam, and a number of other leading humorists, including S.J. Perelman and, in a sense, Benjamin Franklin. (Franklin was the nation's first regularly published humor columnist, and Rudulph dug up an early example of his work.) "Everybody was happy to discuss Baker," says Rudulph. But no one was more pleased than Syndicated Columnist Art Buchwald, Baker's colleague in the American Academy of Humor Columnists, a select and wholly frivolous group. Summed up Buchwald: "Russ...
According to the law, the prosecution need not prove damage to win a conviction, but any jury that might hear the case will probably be more sympathetic than the Justice Department. Wrote Atlanta Constitution Columnist Bill Shipp: "Bert Lance has about as much chance of being convicted by a jury in north Georgia as I have of winning the Irish sweepstakes. And I never buy a ticket...
Backcourt steal of the month: The Herald-American's luring away the Globe's columnist and editorial writer Ken Hartnett, to become city editor--the first such switch of a top Globe staffer in living memory...