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Select     Notable New Yorker

John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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that might be entered for the Pulitzer, I am really not sure what -- I'm not sure at this distance what ticked off Charlie Merz's response to me about the possibility of putting in for a Pulitzer while he was editor and while Krock was on the board.

Whatever ticked it off, there's no question that he made that comment in response to a proposal by me, which I was then relaying, which actually had been made to me by one or more other people, that we put in such and such an editorial for a Pulitzer. So there's no doubt in my mind that Charlie Merz made that comment, that he was taking that position in regard to putting any editorials in from the Times editorial page for a Pulitzer Prize. And remember, the editorial page of the Times had not won a Pulitzer for years and years and years. I think the early 1920s was the last one that the Times had won, and that was of course both before Merz was editor and before Krock was on the Pulitzer board.

But the reason -- I think what's probably interesting is that the reason that Merz made that comment must have been -- although I didn't explore it with him, I didn't think that was a very politic thing to do -- but it was clear to me that the reason he made that comment was that when Charlie Merz was named editor of the editorial page of the Times, as almost the first act that Arthur Hays Sulzberger made when he became publisher of the Times, after the death of Adolph Ochs, his father-in-law -- I'm almost certain that Arthur Krock was -- or fancied himself, at least -- as a leading or the leading candidate to become editor of the editorial page.

Q:

Just to ask you a question about that. Was it that time called the editor of the editorial page or was it called the editor?





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