harold a. katz memoir volume 1 - University of Illinois Springfield

Mr. Mayer had told me, and he said, "Why don" you call my friend, Lloyd Wendt, who is
the editor of the Chicago American? You just tell him I told you to call." You can see how
the old-boy network operates in this field.
So the next day, I called Mr. Lloyd Wendt from downtown in Chicago, and I explained to
him that I had an interest in journalism and that Mr. Sydney Harris had recommended that
I telephone him. "As a matter of fact," he said, "we do happen to have an opening. Why
don't you come over to see me immediately?" And I said naively, "Where are you
located?" And he said, "I'm over here at the Herald American Building," which was on
Wacker and Madison. And I said, "Well . . . how do I get there?" He said, "Where are
you, young man?" I said, "In the Esquire Restaurant," which at that time was on the corner
of Dearborn and Monroe. "Young man," he said, "if you can't find your way from the Esquire
Restaurant to the Herald American, you won't do me much good as a reporter." He
slammed the phone down, and thus ended my career as a journalist.
Q: (laughter) You never got to him then?
A: That's right. I never again attempted to get a job as a journalist. Instead, I pursued
my other activities in the field of labor relations.
Q: Yes, sir. Well let's see now. Then your interest must still have been toward the journal-
ism field while you were at Vanderbilt. Is that correct?
A: Oh, indeed it was. And I was an energetic young journalist on the Vanderbilt Hustler, as
it was called. I used to write a column for it and was well on my way to becoming the editor-
in-chief. I became the managing editor of the Vanderbilt Hustler in my second year, an at-
tainment usually reserved for juniors. And then at the beginning of the third year I was run-
ning things. I used to enjoy writing satire, and I wrote a piece on James G. Stahlman, a
member of the board of trustees of Vanderbilt and a publisher of the Nashville Banner, a big
metropolitan newspaper. He used to write a column called "From the Shoulder," and he
would break up sentences by creating three paragraphs out of one sentence to lend a dy-
namic quality to the writing. This column would appear on the front page of the Nashville
Banner. So, in the very first issue of the Hustler I wrote a satire on his column. Mr.
Stahlman was always invited by Pan American Airlines to every new route they opened
throughout the world. Then, upon his return, he would always write about it in his inimita-
ble style. So, I wrote a satire in which someone with a name suspiciously similar to James G.
Stahlman was invited by Pan American Airways on its maiden flight over Richland Creek, a
little creek about twenty feet wide that meandered through the local golf course. It was one
of my better bits of writing. But it did not sit well.
Thereafter, the recommendation of the outgoing editor that I be moved up from managing
editor of the Vanderbilt Hustler to editor-in-chief was rejected by the Publication Board
without giving me a hearing. I did continue to write, but the extent of my public recognition
was an item that appeared on the bulletin board in the office of the local competing newspa-
per, the Nashville Tennesseean. Some wag purported to nominate me for the Pulitzer Prize
for distinguished service to journalism. It seems that soon after my satire appeared, Mr.
Stahlman ceased writing his column - for a while, at least! Of the edition in which the ac-
tual column appeared in the Vanderbilt Hustler, a few copies remained. When it first ap-
peared, university authorities systematically confiscated the newspaper. Nowadays a stu-
dent would go to the American Civil Liberties Union, and there would have been a lawsuit
filed in federal court. But in those days suppression was no trouble; they could pick up all
the copies of the paper and destroy them.
Q. The administration at Vanderbilt?
A: Yes, the administration. Officially, the Hustler was run by a Publication Board
appointed by the chancellor, and it was this group that, shall we say, chilled my First