Word: plain
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...frequent criticism lodged against many U.S. newspapers is that they discourage aggressive young reporters from doing tough exposes and offbeat features and waging anti-Establishment crusades. Eight years ago, Cleveland Plain Dealer Publisher Thomas Vail decided that his paper needed revitalizing. Over several years, he recruited nearly a score of new staffers who were nicknamed "the young tigers." He loosed them on the seamier side of Ohio's largest city, and the paper's investigative reporting blossomed. Beamed Vail: "Terrific, just terrific...
Youngsters who have left-and some who remain-view the dispute as a matter of principle rather than grammar. In 1971 Reporter Joe Eszterhas was fired after writing an embarrassing satire for Evergreen Review on the Plain Dealer's handling of its scoop on the My Lai massacre photos. That caused ill will and became part of the continuing friction that defined itself in terms of both age and politics. Junior reporters began calling two older executives "Mad Dog" and "Snake," and were in turn referred to as "the Cong" and "the Revolutionaries." For a while management fretted over...
...services and the New York Times News Service," says a former staffer. "There wasn't time for journalism." In fact coverage of local affairs is less enterprising than it was a few years ago. The paper's competitive position, however, shows no sign of being damaged. The Plain Dealer remains Ohio's largest daily, with a circulation of 409,-000. Ad linage is increasing. As far as Vail is concerned, the troubles have ended. "I've got the best management team I've ever had," he says. "We're going to be better than...
Virility. As a writer, Sheed can easily do a double back flip without spilling the wine in his glass. (He has dismissed book reviewing as a couple of insights and "a few simple waltz steps.") Unlike most stylistic acrobats, he is quite capable of writing a dozen plain sentences in a row if dazzle seems inappropriate. Thus, when he describes the reaction to one of Casey's speeches, it is the scene, and not the author's splendid suppleness, that lingers in the mind: "And when it was over, they exploded with a passion that would have sent...
...Pookie Adams (of A Sterile Cuckoo) "a resonant American archetype," I get the feeling that she has gone overboard on her identification. Or perhaps it is just that hitting so hard at Hollywood for so long has made her desperate for something to like. So she lingers over this plain wallflower movie not because it's any flower but because it isn't a plastic...