Politics, Journalism, and The Way Things Were

My Life at The Times, The Hill, and Politico

Martin Tolchin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000739923
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Journalist Biographies

In this book, Martin Tolchin describes his journey from New York Times copy boy to White House correspondent, and as founder of The Hill and co-founder of Politico. He tells of the talented and eccentric colleagues he encountered en route, and the conflicts and tensions that beset him during his 40-year news career. Along the way, he tracks the evolution of political journalism from mostly all-male, smoke-filled newsrooms to the high-tech world of the 24/7 news cycle. As a local reporter in New York City, Tolchin saw his articles change public policy and re-direct millions of dollars in public funds. Nationally, Tolchin reported on some of the country's most important political leaders, including Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and Tip O'Neill, among many others. As a Washington correspondent he was involved in Iran Contra, the Anita Hill hearings on the nomination of Justice Clarence Thomas, and Washington's response to the New York City financial crisis. Mr. Tolchin writes with extraordinary candor and optimism. His story is one that will inform and inspire students, scholars, and general readers in an era in which fake news has sometimes overtaken legitimate reporting. He believes in the power of a free press to guard and guide free people.

1
THE EVOLUTION OF JOURNALISM AND HOW I GOT MY START

They are quiet now, those smoke-filled newsrooms that used to sparkle with eccentrics and occasionally deafen with the rumble of presses in their basements. No longer does one hear the clatter of typewriters or find bottles of scotch in desk drawers. No longer does one hear the cry of “Copy” or “Boy,” when reporters have completed a page of their articles, to send their work to a waiting editor, who would cut and paste their stories.

Newsrooms now look like banks or insurance companies, mostly silent, with low ceilings and cubicles instead of the open spaces of yesteryear. Noiseless computers have replaced the noisy typewriters, and reporters now have college degrees, unlike the many high school dropouts who were among the finest journalists of yester-year. Nor do today’s reporters hang out in bars, rather than take long bus and subway rides to their cramped apartments. In fact, when the passenger ships Andrea Doria and Stockholm collided off the coast of Nantucket in 1956, The New York Times’ top editors had only to walk across the street to a bar to find all the reporters and editors they needed. Thanks to the Newspaper Guild, most journalists can now afford to rent apartments in town, and buy homes in the suburbs.

These are among the changes ushered in by the digital age, a technological marvel that has both its champions and its critics. Count me among the former. Here’s why:

The internet and world wide web have led to a democratization of journalism. One no longer needs a huge physical plant to publish an article that reaches hundreds of thousands of readers. One need not be a millionaire. One only needs a computer. This has led to a proliferation of bloggers, some with large followings. The New York Times and other mainstream media organizations have hired some of these bloggers because of their followings and their expertise. This has led to some lively debates about who is and is not a journalist.

Webster’s New World Dictionary defines a journalist as one who gathers, writes, edits and disseminates news. Has the prevalence of cell phones made the average person who records a police officer killing an unarmed black man and uploads the video to YouTube a journalist? It’s good to know that such abuses, as well as rioters who loot retail stores and other malefactors, may find themselves on the evening news. Do we have to redefine our terms?

The internet is merely the latest milestone in the democratization of journalism. Cave drawings were probably the first example of man’s efforts to describe his surroundings. Then came papyrus used by the Catholic Church for theological treatises. The printing press, invented in 1450, broke the Church’s monopoly on communication, while the telegraph, invented in 1844, allowed for worldwide communication. Then came radio in the early 20th century, followed by television, which allowed viewers to see wars, politicians and major events for themselves. Then came Cable TV, whose hundreds of channels catered to our interests, and biases. Finally came desktop publishing and the internet, which meant you didn’t have to be a zillionaire and have a huge physical plant to be a publisher. All you needed was a computer. The Hill and Politico are among hundreds of desktop publications.

The democratization of journalism was accompanied by a steady increase in literacy, from only priests and aristocrats to the population at large. Knowledge is power. The evolution of journalism has been used for good and ill: The printing press gave wide distribution to both the Bible and Mein Kampf. FDR and Hitler were both masters of the radio. Television has fostered extremists on both the left and right. The internet has been used to rally reform movements around the world, as well as to enlist terrorists. President Trump has proven a master at tweets.

Critics have correctly pointed out that unlike reporters who work for the mainstream media, bloggers have no fact checkers or gatekeepers. It is also true, however, that major media organizations sometimes used gatekeepers to feather their own nests, including supporting political candidates who gave them favors. In The Power Broker, Robert Caro described how the Manhattan entrance to the Triboro Bridge was moved from 96th Street to 125th Street to accommodate William Randolph Hearst, who owned a great deal of real estate above 96th Street. Hearst reciprocated by banning all newspaper criticism of Robert Moses, the official responsible for this change, and the subject of Caro’s book. The internet also has led to the demise of many fine mainstream publications, and a severe reduction in revenue for most of the rest.

The media and politicians have always been at cross-purposes, but President Trump has brought this enmity to new heights. Labeling reporters “the enemies of the people,” and demeaning individual newspapers such as “the failing New York Times,” Trump maintains that the mass media specializes in fake news. Never mind that he has told more than 10,000 lies in his first 2 ½ years in office, according to The Washington Post. One example: Trump denounced as “fake news” The New York Times article asserting that the president asked Matthew Whitaker, then acting Attorney General, to have an ally oversee the investigation of payoffs to two women with whom Trump allegedly had affairs. The ally, Geoffrey Berman, U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, had recused himself from the investigation. The president offered no specifics on what exactly was wrong with The Times’ article. (New York Times, Feb. 20, 2019, p. 1).

Unfortunately for Trump, The Times, The Post, The Wall Street Journal and other mass media publications have had banner years reporting on his administration, reaping multiple awards in the process. Trump also has been good for business. Readership, radio news listenership and TV news viewers have markedly increased, despite their earlier decline because of the loss of advertising caused by the internet. Editors caution reporters not to respond to Trump’s vitriol but to do the best journalism they can do. They have exposed his lies, financial blustering, Russian ties, alienation of allies, pettiness and mean-spirited actions, among other failings.

A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of The Times, lambasted President Trump’s threats against journalists in an off-the-record Oval Office meeting with the president July 20, 2019. “I told the president directly that I thought his language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous,” the 37-year-old publisher said. “I told him that although the phrase ‘fake news’ is untrue and harmful, I am far more concerned about his labeling journalists ‘the enemy of the people,’” he continued. “I warned that his inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence,” especially overseas, where dictators are emboldened by Trump’s attacks on the media. They were “putting lives at risk,” and “undermining the democratic ideals of our nation,” Mr. Sulzberger said.

He felt entitled to break the “off-the-record” restriction after the president said in a Tweet that he and Mr. Sulzberger had discussed “the vast amounts of Fake News being put out by the media and how that Fake News had morphed into the phrase, ‘Enemy of the People.’ Sad!” (ibid)

What follows is the story of my own particular journalistic evolution, from the lowliest position—copy boy at The New York Times—all the way to White House correspondent in its Washington bureau and then on to the founding of The Hill and Politico. Along the way are some side trips into how journalism has changed, and along with it, politics and our perceptions of it, as citizens and people in the world.

***

On March 5, 1953, when I was 24, I thought my life was over. I was on a train from Ft. Meade, Md., to Penn Station, N.Y., having just received my Army discharge. It was not the usual “Honorable Discharge,” but a “General Discharge,” given “for the good of the service.”

The reason: As a teenager and young adult, I had belonged to several groups that the U.S. Attorney General designated “subversive.” These included the Book Find Club, which advertised in The New York Times, and I joined to get two books: John Roy Carlson’s Under Cover, which described his penetration of right-wing extremist groups, and Ray Josephs’ Argentine Diary, which described his life as Buenos Aires correspondent for the United Press. Josephs eventually became a successful public relations man for whom I worked during the fabled New York 113-day newspaper strike. A short, elegant workaholic with wavy white hair, Joseph asked me to stay on after the strike was settled, at twice the salary I had been receiving as a journalist. But I enjoyed being a newspaper reporter and turned him down.

In high school I also briefly joined a Marxist study group, had some left-wing political pamphlets including one by the actress Katherine Hepburn that began, “I speak because I am an American,” and attended a Pete Seeger concert. These were the activities that marked me as a “subversive” in the eyes of the U.S. Army. These facts probably came to the Army’s attention through someone I had befriended when I worked as a stock clerk at Macy’s on Thursday nights and all day Saturday, to help pay for law school. Who knew that his father was head of the New York City’s police department’s anti-subversive unit? One night I invited him to dinner, and he borrowed the pamphlets.

The Army charges against me also included allegations against my mother, a housewife with a keen eye for injustice. As a teenager, she had worked at a sewing machine in a sweat shop in New York’s Garment Center, but managed to get a high school diploma in night school. She was one of the best-read people I ever knew, devouring everything from romantic fiction to books on politics and international affairs. She also loved the theater. Her pocketbook was filled with newspaper clippings, which she would retrieve to score points in political arguments. I knew she was politically left, went to demonstrations to protest lynching, campaigned for voting rights for blacks and would never cross a union picket line. She believed that if people felt strongly enough to strike and forfeit their salaries, that was good enough for her. My parents and I would sometimes approach a theater showing a movie we wanted to see, but if the theater had a picket line, we went home. I’ve always felt the same way, with one notable exception: a New York Times strike by printers who sought to continue featherbedding, getting paid for work not done. But like most members of the Newspaper Guild, I didn’t cross the printers’ picket line. After their strike was settled, and the Guild went on strike, the printers happily crossed our picket line. So much for “solidarity forever.” In any event, my father, a political moderate who often voted Republican, couldn’t have cared less about my mother’s political views and activities. A furrier, he had little respect for the furriers’ union, which he regarded as corrupt and whose president ended up in prison. He had suffered from diabetes and ulcers, and died of a heart attack at the age of 51, when I was 14.

Despite my law degree, I feared that this “less than honorable” Army discharge would make it impossible for me to be admitted to the bar. I was right. Because I was drafted between the time I received my law degree and the next bar exam, the state waived the exam, but I had one more hurdle, the Committee on Character and Fitness. When I eventually faced a panel of five lawyers in the gilded courtroom of the Appellate Division of New York’s Supreme Court in Manhattan, I was told that if I wanted admission to the bar I had to identify my friends, especially my high school friends in the Marxist study group. I declined, not wanting to put them through the same hell I was going through. So, three years of law school went down the drain. It was three years of my life, thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of study. I thought I would have made a good lawyer, too. In retrospect, I think I had a much more exciting and fulfilling life in journalism, but nothing could have been further from my mind during that train ride.

I feared that it would be impossible for me to find any meaningful employment. How could I support myself and the family I hoped to have? As the train sped past farms and towns, I wondered what I’d tell my family and friends, who knew my military discharge date was scheduled for six months later.

This is the story of how, despite this devastating experience, I landed a copy boy’s job at The New York Times, earning $41.50 a week and living on New York’s west side in a single room occupancy building, with a bathroom down the hall. I spent 40 years at The Times, in both New York and Washington, reported on New York politics, the White House and Congress, and then founded The Hill newspaper and helped found Politico. My top salary and bonuses as a journalist exceeded $300,000 a year. I also received income from The New York Times stock options, which put my kids through college, and the eight books I had written with my wife (one of which has been cited in five decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court), as well as lecture fees that were spinoffs of those books. I also won several awards, and did a stint as a Pulitzer jurist.

Like many of my journalistic colleagues, I saw my articles change public policy, and re-direct tens of millions of dollars in government funds. My primary concern was the plight of the poor, sick, elderly and disinherited. I sought to follow the journalistic credo, “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” In this effort, the owners of The Times, The Hill and Politico gave me unstinting support.

But my efforts paled compared to the media’s reporting of the Vietnam War, refuting the rosy estimates made by President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, which was critical in ending public support for the war and bringing the war to an end. My Times colleagues David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan played a key role with their reporting. When President Kennedy sought to have Halberstam reassigned, Times publisher Punch Sulzberger extended his tour.

Similarly, my Times colleague David Burnham almost single-handedly fought corruption in the New York City police department. His articles led to a significant reduction in corruption among top police officers. But the payoffs to police officers from the mafia, drug dealers and other miscreants were so pervasive, so much a part of police culture, that its total elimination was impossible.

In this day and age, it’s hard to appreciate the intensity of the national frenzy, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, against not just communists but also “fellow travelers,” meaning anyone who agreed with communists on any issue. Although a lowly 24-year-old PFC, I was caught up in a national fever. The Soviets had just exploded an atom bomb, and the McCarthyites thought this could not have happened without the help of two American communists: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed. Half a century later, Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, admitted that it was his wife, not Ethel, who was complicit in the crime, taking notes on a family typewriter about construction of an atomic bomb. His testimony had led to Ethel’s conviction and execution. Greenglass told Sam Roberts of The New York Times that he had lied on the witness stand to save his wife (The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair, by Sam Roberts, Random House, 2001).

Alger Hiss added fuel to the fire. He was a perfect foil, a patrician with an Ivy League education who worked in the State Department and was at FDR’s side at international conferences. He also spied for the Soviets. It was the heyday of McCarthyism. To counter Republican accusations that the Democrats had fostered “twenty years of treason,” President Harry Truman initiated a Loyalty Oath and the U.S. Attorney General created a list of “subversive” organizations. Adopted by states and localities, as well as many businesses including the film industry, the Loyalty Oath cost the jobs of grade school teachers and college professors, accountants, janitors, actors, directors, screen writers, scientists, maintenance workers and those on every step of the ladder in the labor force. In his memoir, Clark Clifford, a top Truman aide, wrote that the Loyalty Oath was the action that Truman most regretted (Counsel to the President: A Memoir by Clark Clifford, Random House, 1991).

At Ft. Meade, a kindly Warrant Officer, Mr. Shaeffer, tried to soften the blow of my less than honorable discharge. His long experience in the military had taught him how to make a slight tear in the accompanying discharge papers, so that the word “general” did not appear before the word “discharge.” But there it was, on my actual discharge diploma, big as life.

A few years later, an outraged Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, struck down the Army’s policy of giving general discharges on the basis, not of military misconduct, but “political” activities and associations prior to induction. I now have an honorable discharge and accompanying discharge papers, which rest in my safe deposit box. Similarly, the New York bar stopped inquiring into the political associations of its applicants. And in 1954, Senator McCarthy was censured by the Senate, and his crusade against “subversives” discredited. But not before tens of thousands had lost their jobs and been otherwise injured by his tactics.

Some may read this and say, “I always knew that The Times was a commie-pinko rag,” but I’ve always considered it a daily miracle, with reporting in depth from around the globe and on virtually every subject—from finance to sex. Sadly, The Times also was caught up in the hysteria of the moment, and dismissed those who invoked the Fifth Amendment before House and Senate committees investigating their beliefs.

A quarter century later, my Army discharge continued to haunt me. When The Times assigned me to the White House, I had to be cleared by the Secret Service. Would I lose my job? My b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgments
• 1 The Evolution of Journalism and How I Got My Start
• 2 From Idaho State to The New York Times
• 3 Finally, I’m a Reporter
• 4 Washington, Here I Come
• 5 A Broader Canvas
• 6 The Hill and Politico
• 7 Life After Journalism
• 8 A New Day in Journalism
• Index