Before Liebling: Robert Benchley's 'The Wayward Press'

By: S.L. Harrison Most journalists, when they think of press criticism, turn to A. J. Liebling's "The Press," "The Wayward Pressman" or "The Wayward Pressman?s Casebook." Less familiar, however, is the work of Robert Benchley, who originated ?The Wayward Press.?

Benchley, remembered as a droll humorist, is known for his many books, his motion pictures, and his drama criticism -- he was the New Yorker?s drama critic from 1929-1940. But from 1928-39 Benchley also wrote more than 70 New Yorker essays dealing with an errant press.

Harold Ross, the New Yorker?s editor, periodically examined the press in his magazine with columns such as ?The Current Press,? ?The Press in Review,? and ?Reviewing the News.? Benchley?s first New Yorker piece, in December 1925, ?Up the Dark Stairs,? examined ?the menace of the press? with its proclivity to manufacture sob-sagas out of trivialities. Benchley took on regular commentary in July 1928 and ?The Press in Review? became a permanent department. Writing as Guy Fawkes, Benchley changed the title to ?The Wayward Press? in December. (He used a pseudonym because he was full-time drama critic for the pre-Henry Luce Life magazine.)

Press criticism in that era was a sometime thing after Will Irwin?s Collier?s Weekly 1911 examination of American newspapers. Occasionally, the New York World?s Walter Lippmann would pronounce Olympian opinions or H. L. Mencken would fire a volley of scathing scatter-shot from the American Mercury, but no one took on the role of permanent watchdog.

Benchley was well-equipped for the job. His reputation as a humorist, dating from his Harvard undergraduate days, was secure, with four books and a Broadway show to his credit. He had edited a house organ for the Curtis Publishing Company, worked as a reporter for the New York Tribune, then for the Federal Aircraft Board in Washington, and as a publicist for the Liberty Loan campaign. He also served as managing editor for Vanity Fair, and was drama critic for Life.

In brief, Benchley knew all the tricks, inside and out. He recognized public relations puffery, with an insider?s knowledge of publicity masquerading as news, and could detect when advertising dictated news coverage. Benchley was also a stickler for correct English usage -- no pedant, nevertheless, he knew French and was a voracious reader.

Out of principle Benchley resigned from Vanity Fair, when his good friend Dorothy Parker was fired for writing an unflattering review of actress Billie Burke (wife of producer Florenz Ziegfeld). And when his boss, Ernest Gruening, was unjustly fired by Tribune publisher, Ogden Reid, Benchley resigned in protest. In short, Benchley was a man of principle, with professional integrity.

He read every mainstream New York City newspaper -- in that era, the public had its choice of twelve daily papers. (Benchley skipped the ethnic press.) He read newspapers in an eccentric manner, beginning with column one on the left and proceeded to read the entire eight columns (newspapers at that time contained eight columns), down and up, then to the next page and so on.

If his reading technique was eccentric, Benchley?s examination was exacting. His comment was aimed at his readers, not academic pundits. His first column took the press to task for excessive coverage of Commodore (later Admiral) Richard E. Byrd?s aerial exploits exploring the North Pole, with stories based on little more than speculation.

?Might it not be well,? Benchley wrote, ?if the correspondents refrained from sending anything until they were sure of it, even at the cost of being suspected by the New York office of sleeping on the job?? Generally, Benchley admired the Times with its scientific bent, but in that era it lacked hard news.

Similarly, his comments on president Calvin Coolidge?s ?I do not choose to run? statement chastised press coverage as ?rivaling the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln.? Benchley was clearly irked by ?glutting the market? with overblown stories. ?Slurry? was his term.

Florid writing offended Benchley. He reproved football prose by Grantland Rice, ?an autumn sky heavily tinged with flames and flashes of orange and black [Princeton?s colors] turned suddenly into the shining glow of Yale?s triumphant blue.?

Fawning celebrity stories drew his ire, e.g., trivia dealing with John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford. Editorial homage by the Times and the World -- ?to give the greatest possible value to their respective classes? -- was blatant free advertising. He often exposed advertising masquerading as news.

Elsewhere, Benchley documented the shameless mixture of manufactured news and advertising ballyhoo into stories for auto and boat shows. Benchley deplored the Journal?s use of Nelson Harding (a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner for editorial cartooning) as an illustrator for a boat show advertisement.

Poor writing, doctored photographs, bogus news accounts, sloppy
makeup and questionable quotes, especially, roused Benchley. He questioned quotes ?that we think do not ring true and we do not believe them to be accurate quotations.? Examples appeared regularly in ?The Wayward Press? to illustrate Benchley?s contention that ?reporters and rewrite men put words into the mouths of their characters which no one would ever say.?

Benchley?s moral outrage surfaced during the Sacco-Vanzetti trial. Ralph Pulitzer?s liberal World, after questioning the trial?s fairness, abruptly endorsed the executions in an editorial written by Walter Lippmann. Benchley, who picketed publicly in protest, charged that the World, ?after leading the field in the fight for the two men suddenly prostrated itself and developed a serious streak of yellow.? Benchley noted that this stand cost the World the services of columnist Heywood Broun, who was suspended for opposing the executions.

He deplored the press? performance during the Lindbergh kidnapping trial. He wrote the ?decline in the standards of journalism, and this decline was nothing short of a debacle.? Benchley cited the Times, the collective Hearst press the tabloids, the Herald Tribune, the World-Telegram, the Post and Editor & Publisher for printing ?incredible? stories -- ?we cannot even read them through without nausea.? The lack of ?integrity of news gathering? during the Lindbergh trial, Benchley wrote, ?was a mockery of a profession of which some people used to be very proud.?

Writing was hard work, film work (he won an Academy Award in 1935) was not and it paid more. When Benchley?s tenure as a press reviewer ended, Ross tried St. Clair McKelway, Woolcott Gibbs, John Lardner, and Horace Greeley Jr. [Philip Wiley] before Liebling took over after World War II.

Liebling denigrated them all, especially Benchley, whose criticism he
dismissed as ?in the same spirit as [Benchley] would have reviewed the vaudeville shows we then had.? As good as Liebling was, he was no Benchley, lacking Benchley?s humor and wit. Liebling was an attack dog that mauled the press. Benchley?s admonishments, made with humor sometime whimsical, was arguably the best of the lot.

Many of the transgressions he recorded occur still. Newspaper people, who regularly reward themselves with prizes for excellence, could profit from these reminders of an errant press. A look back at Benchley?s past journalism era -- the ?Third-and-a-Half-Estate? -- could provide an inoculation for the ills that infect today?s press and benefit all of us.