Like the stillborn lying

In the morgue for study,

Forever drift a ghost?

These were lines I wrote to tease a friend working for some big news agency in Washington. Because he was covering President Kennedy’s State of the Union message to Congress, he had been unable to extend me the hospitality of his home during my first visit to the capital. The pity of it, he later wrote to apologise, was that the story he had done at such great strain and sacrifice was not used by a single newspaper he knew of. It appeared none liked the tone of it-which inclined to the flippant. But could it be that the story was not even fed cut in the first instance? News management was the order of the day then in Washington, and in this matter of standing up for the flag and the constitution, the division is pretty thin between the government and the press, which, as well as being big business in its own right, provides a proper trumpet for the grand triumphant march that is America.

I never quite got to know for although I paid several more visits to Washington I did not have that reunion with my friend which both of us had so much set our hearts on. Something seemed to come between us which made for a steady drifting apart. I dwell on this because it turned out to be symptomatic of my relationship with the various newspapers and editors I met with in America. First, there was great warmth and a feeling of fellowship; then an inexplicable freeze, followed by a feeling of disaffection on both sides, even of frustration and anger.

The first of these meetings, right at the college level, took place at Princeton and more or less by accident. I had dropped in at the University Store to pick up a fresh stock of handkerchiefs, pants, tooth-paste and soap, all of them articles which I seemed to shed behind me wherever I stopped for the night, when my cousin and guide, first of the new crop of African and black students now altering the lily-white face of Princeton, grabbed me and said: ‘How would you like to see the student newspaper?’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘And how far from here?’

‘It’s right inside this building,’ he laughed, ‘right at the back in fact.’

So we took the steps up, and before we were on the landing bumped into a red-faced youth. ‘Oh, want to see The Princetonian?’ he offered. We said yes. ‘I am just a reporter here, you know,’ he laughed again. ‘But come on in and see our chairman.’

We followed hot on his heels, into a room all rolls and stacks, and there pondering over some opinion on the ­editorial desk, was a big beardless fellow who between the tap-tap of his pencil against his teeth, said he wasn’t exactly the boss of the place, but that he was a top brass there was no denying. Whether publisher, editor-in-chief, president or some other such post, as all papers here seem to have, I can’t quite recall now. But I remember his fixing me to the door with the steady projectile of his pale bluish eyes when my cousin said something to the effect that I work on a newspaper back home in Nigeria.

‘What paper?’ the young newspaper executive asked, tap-tapping at his teeth.

I gave the name and was not surprised it made no impression on him.

‘What is your circulation?’ he asked, and because the pencil had stopped somewhat against the enamel of his teeth, there was a sound like the hiss of a snake to his innocent question.

‘About 75,000,’ I remember saying.

‘That’s very respectable,’ the up-and-coming brass said approvingly. And that ended the interview, for as he put it, they were very busy that afternoon.

The Princetonian is a real chip off the old block. If its fine type and texture of the paper are calculated to recall The New York Times and perhaps The Christian Science Monitor in Boston, the photo size and bold exposure it holds up to the reader certainly go back to the tabloid tradition. A fine mixture of airs pardonable in student journalism, except that everybody here takes everything so seriously, and will not be second to anybody in the honourable role of upholding America the bounteous and beautiful. In the last presidential elections, the paper, a true voice of the thoroughbreds that fill the Princeton stable, opted for the Republican jockey, Richard Nixon. And as evidence of the healthy cross-current of that old democratic spirit flowing through the woods and halls of Princeton, it is only fair to report that a majority of the staff stood up manfully for the Democrat runner, John Kennedy. Not that it makes a difference either way.

But the phenomenon of healthy disagreement reflecting the widest will of the people showed in its most robust form over the Cuban crisis. Apparently, a division of opinion had developed among members of the editorial committee. To accommodate this, there had to be a follow-up of opinion expressed the day before, a complete right-about-turn by this time, and all duly signed by its authors or signatories in the grand tradition of the Bill of Rights that, like Marvells’ inevitable chariot of time, is for ever charging at the back of every true American mind. This was a fresh and brilliant performance indeed to come from adolescents, considering that the elders and adults through the entire course and field gave of nothing spectacular but hot puffs of breath and the heavy tread of unanimous feet. Still, The Princetonian can huff too, when it comes to it, and this pretty often enough and on all sorts of occasions. ‘You should all go and see Galileo with your dates,’ it once pronounced judgment in a preview carried under the editorial column, ‘although the author of the play, the German Bertolt Brecht, is a damned Communist.’

And yet on another occasion, in a great burst of service to the community, which like many another in the United States will do anything today to contain the skeleton of racial relations now tumbling out of its long-shut-up cupboard, The Princetonian had a zestful social scientist do a survey of what the students at the university think of Jews and Negroes in this day and age. The last time there was a tally like that on the campus was more than a generation back, when Paul Robeson was refused admission by the college on account of his colour. Different standards were adopted for each of the sets of questionnaires distributed, and all of them tacitly understood against a backdrop of those absolutes that go to make a true Yankee. Thus for the Jews, there were leading questions like: do you think they are industrious? Are they intelligent? Do they insist on their pound of flesh? And for the Negro, typical of the questions were: are they musical? Do they show a tendency to idle? Aren’t those people sloppy and slovenly?

Needless to say, in this stupid game of mixed-up rules and rigged results, the odds showed the Jews in the eyes of the élite at Princeton had made strides deserving of a review of that quota system still used to keep them and the blacks out of Princeton. The shadow of Albert Einstein at the nearby Institute of Advanced Study probably had something to do with it! All African students, in the absence of Negro undergraduates at Princeton, felt furious that the best of American young minds should still regard the black members of their society as slovenly, idle, and musical in the pejorative sense of that word. But they apparently thought better of it and kept the lid firm on the boiling pot of their discontent. A wag among them well summed up the whole incident when he said: ‘Their grandfathers ate yam like everyone else, but thought it cooked by the gods themselves, and today so do their heirs. For how else can the tribe continue?’

From this collegiate start I graduated to the county level. This time there was some preparation on both sides of the fence. In the interval, however, at a tea-party given by the English-Speaking Union, Princeton Chapter, at Dean Hamilton’s residence, Wyman House, for incoming students from the Commonwealth, I came under the shade of that fascinating plant, originally of America and now sprouting in the most shallow and fallow of lands all over the world, to wit the public poll as a going business.

‘Did you say you are from Nigeria?’ a young matron in green cornered me.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Come and meet my husband,’ she said graciously.

I tried to find a place for my cup now empty and cold in my hands but the thick crush of guests speaking English as it should be spoken was everywhere, and through it now tore a huge, handsome man of thirty or thereabouts, balding in front and in blazer.

‘This is my husband,’ the charming lady brought us two together. ‘And George, this young man is from Africa.’

‘How good to know you!’ the man gripped my hand in his paw. ‘My name is George Gallup.’

‘George Gallup of the famous polls?’

‘George is the son,’ the wife added soothing my creased brow. ‘He is in business with his father though. He is on TV tonight, George, isn’t it tonight he’ll be on?’ George agreed it was.

‘You must see his show, you know.’

‘Yes, I’d love to – that is if I can find a set!’

‘Haven’t you got one at the Graduate College? Oh, I see, it’s everybody’s, and so you can’t really pick and choose, can you?’

I said it was so but still I would try.

‘And how do you set about it really?’ I asked.

‘Oh, we send sample questions to sample people in sample areas – but it depends on many things, you know,’ the poll pundit explained. ‘And you have to do a lot of reading and interpreting of the returns.’

‘Rather risky, isn’t it?’ I asked in my innocence.

‘Oh, not really,’ they both began. ‘Haven’t we always achieved fairly accurate polls?’ husband and wife asked themselves. They gave some percentage which they mulled over briefly, a percentage of near perfect forecasts to make the oldest oracles still left look to their remaining groves.

‘And considering we are only a small set-up, it really is amazing.’

‘Most amazing,’ I agreed. ‘About how many are you?’

‘Oh, almost the entire business is in Princeton here, you know. Of course, we have a few hands on the field all over the country.’

‘And what have they found out is the opinion right now of the American people about this Cuba business?’

‘If you mean the business about invading that unhappy island … the general opinion of Americans, from coast to coast, is that the administration should not start a shooting war to remove those missiles planted by the Russians. After all, the California man hardly knows Cuba exists!’

We all laughed, poured ourselves more tea, and got fresh biscuits and buns to nibble at. A few days after, President Kennedy announced the American blockade of Cuba.

Somehow, I never quite got round to visiting the world famous pollster plant at Princeton as the young man and woman helping to tend it had invited me to do. Either Mr Gallup was out lunching or something or other was on, the secretaries who answered my telephone calls told me politely.

On the other hand, my visit to The Home News in New Brunswick, some 20 miles from Princeton, came off pat. Its publisher and owner, a Princeton resident, actually called, at the Woodrow Wilson School one early morning so we could meet and work out the details of my visit. My excitement was keen, in fact, much sharper than the teeth and claws of the cold that was beginning to set in then. Consequently, I showed up on the dot although the manager of my life at Princeton was to say, several months after, as one of the unpardonable bad things I had done, that I had shown discourtesy by turning up late for the meeting. What happened was that we had agreed that the promotions manager back in the press in New Brunswick would call me later that week to arrange where and at what hour and on what bus he should meet me. It was this call I had missed because I had in the meantime sandwiched a visit to New York. I missed the right train returning, but got on the telephone at once to my Princeton sponsor and the publisher, and at that time, everybody said: ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter at all!’

Publisher Boyd, fiftyish, crinkly about the eyes, and very sprightly, well confirmed that old saying that small bottles usually carry good wine. This was not the first time he had played host to an African journalist. As a matter of fact, a Nigerian editor had spent some time on his paper a year or so back and was wanting at that time to return to the States. Did I know him? I said I did, and when I added the paper I worked for before coming was part-owned by Nigerians and part-owned by the Canadian press mogul Roy Thomson, his Irish eyes lit up. And did I know the old rogue was even then in New York? No, I said. Has he come to carry off some more newspaper chains, the old rogue with itchy fingers? Which made even our old colonel join in our laughter. A conscientious democrat, (as a matter of fact he was chairman of his local party branch), the colonel manoeuvred the topic to the influence a paper like that of our friend was likely to exert on the course of voting in Congress and the local elections which were then in the offing down the entire sweep of the land.

‘We are not partisan,’ the press baron said, ‘but we do make it a point of the duty we owe the country and ­community we serve to examine candidates on their individual merits. It is on the basis of this we recommend to the electorate the acceptance or rejection of any candidate put up by either of the parties.’

‘A very good policy,’ the colonel nodded his hectagonal head in approval.

And before the small conference broke up, there was some talk that it would be a good thing if my proposed tour of the press could take in some newspaper chains out in the MidWest. These had a character and a colour all their own, and the publisher who had the necessary connections said he would only be too pleased to put me in touch. I lost that opportunity.

The Home News, true to its name, has all the family and close community atmosphere of a house magazine, but a very prosperous one indeed. Serving the twin counties of Middlesex and Somerset with a population of about half a million between them, its readership of more than 40,000, come weekday or Sunday, forms part of the garden state of New Jersey now fast turning itself into one vast suburban sprawl between the two metropolitan centres of New York and Philadelphia, America’s two giant, ancient cities on the east coast. The paper is understandably very proud of the fact that the average family income of $7,000 enjoyed by its readers stands out as one of the highest buying powers in the whole of the United States. Thus it carries every day a heavy tonnage of advertisements, covering in the course of the year more than a million inches of linage worth its weight in gold.

I became fast friends with the paper’s promotion manager John Donnelly. He showed me the whole house from the editorial section to the press room, where a brand new Scot Press sported six units. There they stood sleek, sturdy and restive like stallions all set for a race. The editorial page editor, Mr Alexander Jones, also gave me generously of his time and knowledge. Ours was a meeting on common ground, to quote the beautiful story the paper did on my visit. And between him and the management there was a happy meeting of minds. As a result, there hardly was any split in opinion he could think of, and in any case, a good number of the editorials, like feature and news stories, were syndicated stuff that came in by teleprinter or post. In the women’s department, two perfectly charming girls explained to me the smooth working of their page. A lot of this was taken up by wedding photographs and stories. Both girls were somewhat startled when I likened their job to that of compiling albums of social events. Oh, not really, they demurred, and how was the job done on my own paper? They would love to see a Nigerian newspaper, you know, they said. I promised I would let them, not that there was anything much to show, but all the same, I said I would. Much to my shame, the promise was never fulfilled.