Columnists are the human face of daily newspapers, and
have been an American tradition throughout the twentieth
century and well into the twenty-first century. Traditionally,
these writers appear in a fixed section of the newspaper such
as the opinion pages, or the front of a local news section, or
in the entertainment section. Columnists write to a fixed
length, usually about eight hundred words. They are published on a consistent cycle, be that weekly, twice or three
times a week, or even daily. Columns are signed and reflect
personal opinion, and they differ from editorials which are
the unsigned institutional opinion of newspapers. Most columnists are general interest writers who may focus on politics, humor, or local issues, and yet they are not limited to
write exclusively about their specialty. What is required is
that their work be read by a large number of readers.
Columnists began appearing in daily newspapers in the
late 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s. George Ade
(1866–1944) of Chicago wrote a column called “Stories
of the Streets and of the Town” for the Chicago Record
from 1893–1900. Ade’s pieces captured the colorful slang
of working-class people. Ringgold “Ring” Lardner (1885–
1933) wrote the “In Wake of the News” sports column for
the Chicago Tribune from 1913 to 1919, then a humor column from 1919 to 1927. William Penn Adair “Will” Rogers
(1879–1935) endeared himself to readers with wry cowboy
humor. His column was syndicated, meaning it originated
at a newspaper or institution then was sold to other newspapers at rates based on circulation. Rogers’s column began
in 1922 and ended in 1935 after he died in a plane crash.
Rogers is associated with the quotation, “Well, all I know is
what I read in the papers.”
Walter Winchell (1897–1972) shaped the modern gossip
column, beginning in the 1920s at the New York Evening
Graphic, and continuing through the 1960s at New York’s
Daily Mirror. Winchell was the iconic reporter who wore a
fedora and barked his column to the beat of teletype clatter.
Louella Parsons (1881–1972) emerged as a widely read Hollywood columnist for Hearst Newspapers. By the 1930s, her
column reached one in four American households. Parsons
was challenged by Hedda Hopper (1885–1966) an actressturned columnist for the Los Angeles Times and other
newspapers. Hopper’s column at its peak reached thirty-five
million readers.
A sibling rivalry developed between twins Esther Pauline Lederer, better known as advice columnist Ann Landers (1918–2002), and Pauline Esther Phillips, known to
readers as Abigail Van Buren or Dear Abby. During the last
half of the twentieth century, both writers often used humor
to answer serious questions about relationships, families,
sexuality, substance abuse, and disease.
War provided another serious theme for writers. World
War II correspondent Ernie Pyle (1900–1945) is lauded
as a patron saint by the National Society of Newspaper
Columnists. Pyle’s Scripps Howard dispatches emphasized the struggles of foot soldiers instead of the lives of
commanders.
Political Columnists
Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) set the standard for the modern political column when he began writing for the New York Herald Tribune in 1931 and continued through 1967.
“Today and Tomorrow” appeared in about two hundred
newspapers and was read closely by the government leaders
and elites. Lippmann’s analyses sometimes helped to shape
public policy. Dorothy Thompson, also of the Herald Tribune, wrote a political column on international affairs from
1936–1958. James Reston (1909–1995) two-time Pulitzer
Prize winner and Washington correspondent with the New
York Times, in 1960 began writing a three times weekly column labeled “Washington,” which became must reading for
officials and the public. Reston, who admired Lippmann,
was a widely respected liberal commentator.
There were also a number of prominent conservative columnists during the latter half of the twentieth century. William F. Buckley Jr. was one of the most influential. Buckley,
who came from a privileged background, needled rather
than slashed liberal and moderate adversaries with a British-like air of facile intelligence that seemed to give him the
high ground in debates. His syndicated column appeared in
350 newspapers during his prime years from 1962 through
the 1980s. Buckley also hosted the Public Broadcasting
System TV show “Firing Line.” That exposure elevated
him to iconic status in popular culture. Buckley’s successor as leading conservative on op-ed pages was George F.
Will, who began syndication through the Washington Post
Writers Group in 1973. During the early twentieth-first
century, his column appeared in four hundred newspapers
twice a week. He also wrote regularly for Newsweek magazine. Another significant conservative writer was James
Kilpatrick, a Richmond, Virginia, journalist. Kilpatrick
wrote “The Writer’s Art,” a column devoted to language
usage. Kilpatrick, the conservative foil in CBS “60 Minutes” Point-Counterpoint segment, was parodied on NBC’s
“Saturday Night Live.”
Another influential conservative was William Safire,
who was once active in the Richard Nixon administration,
and who during the 1970s was included in the New York
Times’s mix of Op-Ed Page columnists. A speechwriter
before he became a columnist, Safire coined the phrase
“nattering nabobs of negativism,” used by Vice President
Spiro Agnew. Safire’s humorous column on grammar and
usage, “On Language,” was long a mainstay of the Sunday
New York Times Magazine.
Since the 1980s, conservative partisans complained
about alleged liberal bias in news coverage, however conservative views dominated American opinion pages. The
largest newspapers of two hundred thousand or more circulation often had opinion pages that balanced liberal, conservative and moderate perspectives. However, as the majority
of U.S. dailies had a circulation one hundred thousand or
less, publishers more so than editors decided who spoke
in op-ed spaces. Often, those writers reflected the political climate, which in the late twentieth to early twenty-first
centuries was conservative.
There were widely read liberal- and moderate-leaning
columnists to be sure. For example, the Washington Post
Writers Group syndicate offered David Broder, an observer
of Washington politics since the 1950s; Ellen Goodman
of the Boston Globe, who offered a liberal and feminist
viewpoint since the 1970s, and William Raspberry, for
four decades from 1966 until 2006 a moderate who was
often praised for his political yet non-ideological writing
style. A peer of Raspberry was the late Robert C. Maynard
(1937–1993), publisher of the Oakland Tribune in California. Maynard simulated dinner table-like discussions in his
syndicated columns in order to solve social dilemmas.
Metro Columnists
Local section columnists wrote opinionated articles about
issues close to home that resonated with their readers. For
decades Mike Royko (1932–1997) wrote in the voice of
working class, white ethnic Chicagoans for the Chicago
Daily News, Sun-Times, and finally the Chicago Tribune.
Favorite Royko themes were mayoral politics, social issues,
and crime. Jimmy Breslin was a sportswriter before editors
coaxed him to become a local columnist with the New York
Herald Tribune during the 1960s. In 1976, Breslin continued his column at the New York Daily News. In 1988, he
moved to Newsday of Long Island, New York. Breslin took
readers to the gritty city neighborhoods he walked, or he
had them listen in on the colorful language of politicians,
working stiffs, and wise guys the columnist engaged.
Herb Caen (1916–1997) was a San Francisco institution
for nearly six decades, from 1938 until his death. Caen is
credited with coining the terms “beatnik” and “hippie.”
Caen’s daily column in the San Francisco Chronicle consisted of multiple items separated by elipses. Each item
was loaded with sarcasm and wit. He wrote authoritatively
about people and culture of the San Francisco Bay area. For
two decades, Chuck Stone of the Philadelphia Daily News,
wrote about race, local politics, criminal justice, and social
trends. Stone gained national notoriety. From the 1970s and
until his retirement from the paper in 1991 when he entered
academia, dozens of crime suspects surrendered to Stone,
so the columnist could escort them safely to police.
Columnist Tandems and Teams
At the end of World War II, Joseph (1910–1989) and Stewart Alsop (1914–1974) co-wrote “Matter of Fact,” a political column originating at the New York Herald-Tribune that
appeared in about 135 newspapers for 12 years until 1958.
What distinguished them was they led the trend of co-written syndicated columns. In 1963, the New York HeraldTribune paired Rowland Evans (1921–2001) with Robert
Novak and for three decades they produced Evans & Novak
columns. Evans retired and Novak continued writing the
column solo after 1993. Jack Germond and Jules Witcover
collaborated on a “Politics Today” column distributed by
Tribune Media Services. Both writers worked much of their
careers at the Baltimore Sun. Germond and Witcover were
recognizable faces on Sunday morning public affairs television shows.
In 1932, Drew Pearson (1897–1969) began the “Washington Merry-Go-Round” investigative political column that exposed government secrecy, excess and incompetence. After 1942, Pearson wrote the column solo. In 1965,
he shared the column byline with assistant Jack Anderson.
Upon Pearson’s death in 1969, Anderson (1922–2005)
became sole proprietor of the column. The “Merry-GoRound,” which Anderson wrote with numerous associates,
grew to a high of one thousand newspaper clients in 1997,
which makes it one of the most successful columns ever.
Humorists
George Ade, Ring Lardner, and Will Rogers were among
early twentieth-century humorists. One of the best-known
satirists of the last half of the century was Art Buchwald.
His nightclub column “Paris After Dark” began in 1949
in the New York Herald Tribune. Then in the early 1950s,
Buchwald’s column used hyperbole to depict American
tourists’ perspectives of Europe. Buchwald moved to Washington, D.C., in the 1960s and his political satire column
was renamed “Capitol Punishment.” At his peak, Buchwald’s column appeared in 650 newspapers.
In 1983, Dave Barry began writing a humor column for
the Miami Herald that was notorious, said one historian,
“for its highly developed sense of lunacy.” Barry used heaping portions of hyperbole like Buchwald and mocked everyone, including the judges who gave him a Pulitzer Prize
for commentary, and linguists such as Kilpatrick and Safire
with his “Mr. Language Person” parodies in which Barry
“explained” the “marsupial phrase” and “pluperfect consumptive.” Barry’s column appeared in about five hundred
newspapers.
Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) had several nicknames:
Socrates of the ironing board, America’s housewife at large,
and queen of suburbia. Yet what was clear was the success of
her domestic humor column, “At Wit’s End.” From 1965 to
1996 up to 900 newspapers carried the three-times-weekly
column. Bombeck’s humor was often self-effacing and she
rarely poked fun at others. Bombeck once called herself
“too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security,
and too tired for an affair.”
Minority and Women Voices
George Schuyler was a contrarian black conservative voice
in the weekly Pittsburgh Courier from 1924 to 1966. In
1965 Schuyler began syndication in the North American
Newspaper Alliance and wrote until his death in 1977. Carl
Rowan (1925–2000) began a syndicated column with the
Chicago Sun-Times in 1965 that continued until the end of
the twentieth century.
In 1992, eighteen African American columnists formed
the William Monroe Trotter Group, a society that was a
testament to the steady growth of minority columnists
who numbered one hundred during the 1980s and 1990s.
For example, Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald began his
column in 1991 and emerged as one of the fresher voices
of the twenty-first century, connecting with minority and
mainstream audiences. Pitts’ angry column the day after
the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center towers
in September 2001 generated about thirty thousand email
responses.
In addition to Dorothy Thompson of the Herald Tribune
and Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe, noted women
opinion page columnists included Mary McGrory (1918–
2004) of the Washington Star and Washington Post; Molly
Ivins, an acerbic political writer based in Austin, Texas;
Anna Quindlen, whose “Life in the 30s” New York Times
column was called the voice of the Baby Boom generation,
and Maureen Dowd, a reliably sarcastic New York Times
political columnist.
American newspaper columnists have a wide range of
interests: politics, local issues, celebrities and gossip, advice,
humor, or general interests—whatever is on their mind on
the day they are scheduled to publish about eight hundred
words. The common thread that ties these varied writers
together has been their skill in connecting with readers.
Further Reading
Goodman, Ellen. Keeping in Touch. New York, Summit Books,
1985.
Ivins, Molly. Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She? New York:
Random House, 1991.
Raspberry, William. Looking Backward at Us. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991.
Riley, Sam G. The American Newspaper Columnist. Westport,
CT: Praeger Publishers, 1998.
Reston, James. Deadline: A Memoir. New York: Random House,
1991.
Royko, Mike. Sez Who? Sez Me. New York: Warner Books, 1983.
Wayne Dawkins