Word: reston
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Time magazine has quoted Reston's mother as saying he was only dissuaded from becoming a professional golfer immediately after high school, by "prayer and argument." Reston, on the other hand, says he was "never really interested" in anything but reporting...
...Reston had a motley assortment of jobs in the early part of his career. In 1933 he left the Daily News to work for the sports publicity office of Ohio State University. The next year he became travelling press secretary for the Cincinnati Redlegs. In each town the team visited, Reston went to the local newspaper and asked for a job. After eight months he got one-through his high school friend Milton Caniff, later of Steve Canyon fame-with the Associated Press in New York. He wrote sports features, and for a time a chit-chat column about books...
...Reston was no prodigy. He had been turned down twice by the Times of New York when he was hired in London. But starting slowly may have been good fortune. Perhaps as a result Reston has never believed he had all the answers-or even, to listen to him, any of the answers. His first rule in gathering information is not to pretend to know a subject when he doesn't. "I do my homework on what the problems are," he says, "and then keep asking questions about the solutions...
...says the same Times man "who thinks he can learn something from everybody. This is a personal as well as a professional trait. He wants to know what you're thinking. He especially wants to know what young people are thinking." One Harvard student who has known Reston for many years says he can remember being "grilled" by him when he was nine...
After he joined the Times Reston's curiosity began to pay off. In 1941 he moved to the Washington bureau. The following year he took three months off from the Times to organize the U.S. Office of War Information in London. In December of 1942 he returned to this country as assistant to Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the Times. Nine months later he became acting head of he London bureau. In 1944 he went to Washington to stay...