Northern Virginia Sun
Encyclopedia
The Northern Virginia Sun was a newspaper
published in Arlington, Virginia, until 1998. For much of its life, it was a six-day-a-week broadsheet
, published Monday through Saturday, that emphasized local news.
Its legacy can be seen in the Arlington public library
, which has maintained a collection of the Sun's "Then and Now" series about Arlington landmark
s and history. These began appearing in the Sun in the 1950s and continued, on and off, through the 1980s.
The Suns corporate descendant, Sun Gazette Newspapers, was sold to American Community Newspapers in 2005.
The Sun drew national attention in the late 1970s when owner Herman J. Obermayer said the Sun would print the name of accusers in rape
cases that came to trial, out of a sense of "fairness" between the two sides. Time magazine
reported that Obermayer's policy was “hotly denounced by local feminists, police
, prosecutor
s, hospital
officials and nearly all the Sun readers who have written or telephoned Obermayer to comment.” Time quoted Benjamin C. Bradlee
, executive editor of the Washington Post, as saying, “It’s wrong. It’s misguided. We wouldn’t do it.”
The new owners were mostly well-connected and well-off Democrats
"who had fought shoulder to shoulder in the [Adlai E.] Stevenson campaigns" in 1952 and 1956. Now they were waiting out the Eisenhower
years. The four principal partners were George W. Ball, later an under secretary of state in the Kennedy
and Johnson
administrations; Philip M. Stern, a grandson of Sears, Roebuck
chairman Julius Rosenwald
and son of a president of New Orleans Cotton Exchange
; Clayton Fritchey
, a journalist and Democratic operative who, as a reporter for the Cleveland Press
, had covered Eliot Ness
’s campaign to root out police corruption
in Cleveland
; and Arnold Sagalyn, who signed on as assistant publisher. Stern and Fritchey were alumni of the New Orleans Item, Fritchey’s next career stop after Cleveland. Fritchey had been the editor in New Orleans, Stern a reporter and editorial writer.
Others who joined them as backers of the Sun included Gilbert Hahn, a Republican
who was heir to the Hahn shoe store empire and chairman of the D.C. City Council.
"The investment proved to be a disastrous mistake from the beginning," historian James A. Bill wrote. "Ball and his three colleagues extended their losing streak from politics into the world of business."
They began with high hopes. “Their dream was to turn [the Sun] into a suburban success like Newsday
on Long Island
, whose concentrated circulation and affluent readership had managed to scare the large New York City
newspapers,” the author Eleanor Lanahan wrote. But it was an uphill fight. For one thing, Arlington was not Long Island: the Washington dailies had deeper penetration in suburban Virginia
than the New York dailies did, and soon after World War II
. By the time Stern and Fritchey were trying to create a Washington version of Newsday, readers’ habits were changing as early-evening television news undercut afternoon newspapers like the Sun, which later billed itself as the "daily hometown newspaper of Arlington, Falls Church
and Fairfax
." But the Sun could not keep up with Fairfax, one of the fastest-growing suburbs in the nation.
Compounding the problem, Ball and the Sun’s new other owners—along with some of the reporters they hired—were outsiders. Fritchey, for example, lived in the Georgetown
section of Washington and was a regular on the dinner-party circuit there, not in Arlington. One of the reporters was Frances Lanahan, the daughter of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald
. Lanahan’s daughter recounted how Frances Lanahan, known as Scottie, befriended a freshman congressman, John Brademas
of Indiana
, who had been elected in 1958. Brademas said that Scottie “took me, then 31, under her wing and introduced me to the Washington society of which she was so active and vivid a part.” “She enthusiastically organized fundraising
parties for me . . . and I especially remember the great success of one that featured ‘Peter, Paul and Mary
.’”
For lack of revenue
, they had to run the Sun on a shoestring. “The staff … was young and underpaid,” or worse, unsophisticated and unaware. The nationally syndicated columnist Drew Pearson
ran an item about Fritchey in 1958 that did not reflect well on the Sun’s staff. Gov. W. Averell Harriman
had called the Sun, looking for Fritchey. The person who took Harriman’s call did not know who Fritchey was.
By 1960, Fritchey left The Sun. “The paper had been losing money, and management decided that the readership had been too transient. Arlington was a temporary stop for airline stewardesses
, Pentagon employees and foreign service people who had no investment in the schools as most of their children weren’t educated there. Too few residents of Northern Virginia were calling it a home. Also, the Sun had never been able to attract major advertisers. Supermarket
s and department store
s had concentrated on the wider circulation of the metropolitan papers. Compounding the problem, in 1960 the newspaper union went on strike for higher wages and selected the Sun, as one of the weaker papers, to make its point. [The Sun] brought in scabs, which was unsettling for the liberal, pro-union management, who had to cross their picket line
s to get to work. The strike was so costly that it precipitated the sale of the paper.”
Ball's family "never forgot the enormity of the failure," according to historian James A. Bill. "Thirty years later, George would wince when the newspaper was mentioned. It was estimated that this white elephant
cost George Ball half a million dollars." Bill estimated the Sun's quarterly loss at $100,000 in 1961, after Ball, Stern, Fritchey and Sagakyn had severed their ties to the Sun.
Herman J. Obermayer, editor and publisher of the Long Branch Daily Record in New Jersey
, bought the Sun in 1963 and controlled it for 25 years. Like Stern and Fritchey, he was an alumnus of the New Orleans Item. He had worked there in the 1950s, as classified advertising
manager. Obermayer, a decorated World War II veteran who had graduated from Dartmouth College
, had begun his career as a reporter on the Long Island Daily Press in Queens
, New York.
In the early 1970s the Sun moved to a brick and concrete building at 1227 North Ivy Street. Vacated in 1990 when the paper was taken over by Sun Gazette Newspapers of Vienna, Va.
, the building is now a day care
center.
delegate to the United Nations
. He hired Fritchey as director of public affairs for the United States mission to the U.N. Later Fritchey a nationally syndicated newspaper column. He retired in 1984.
Stern went on to found the Fund for Investigative Journalism. He also used his family foundation to advance causes and organizations he believed in. Ralph Nader
described Stern as the "most creative, versatile and persistent philanthropist of our generation." His family foundation gave reporter Seymour M. Hersh a grant in 1969 when he was digging into the story of the My Lai Massacre
in Vietnam
. Stern foundation money also went to the Government Accountability Project
, Teamsters for a Democratic Union
, the Center for Science in the Public Interest
and the Women's Legal Defense Fund, among others.
In the late 1950s the Sun’s constellation of well-connected reporters included Lanahan, who did investigative reporting
and covered Virginia politics. She and Fritchey carried on an affair while both worked at the Sun. “Many of their coworkers were well aware that Clayton and Scottie were in love,” Lanahan's daughter wrote.
Other reporters at the Sun when Stern and Fritchey were in charge included Helen Dewar
, later a congressional reporter for The Washington Post; Marianne Means, later a political columnist for the Hearst syndicate; and Shirley Elder, later chief congressional correspondent for the Washington Star
. Dewar, who had just graduated from Stanford
, joined the Sun after one week at the Washington Post in 1958. She covered education
for two years before she went back to the Post in 1961.
Ralph Temples became executive editor in mid-1961. He had been executive city editor of the Palm Beach Post-Times in Florida
. From the mid-1960s to and the early 1970s, the paper's day-to-day coverage was supervised by Carol Griffee, who was initially city editor, then executive editor, according to an interview with her conducted for a University of Arkansas
project on the Arkansas Gazette
, where she worked as a reporter after she left the Sun. Griffee was the daughter of a makeup editor at the Evening Star in Washington and worked as a reporter at the Star starting in 1963, covering Fairfax County
and the Virginia General Assembly
. She left the Star in 1966 and after working briefly on Capitol Hill, went to the Sun.
In 1971, Griffee arranged a leave of absence
and tried politics, campaigning for a seat on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors
. She lost by 14 votes. She returned to the Sun, where, she said, "the publisher completely botched the switch-over from hot type
to cold type
, and I was just--I was just a basket case. I was so tired, so sleep deprived, just so burned out, that I finally said, 'I've got to get out of here.'" She finally left at the end of 1972.
One of Griffee's reporters at the Sun was Christopher Dodd
, who worked at the Sun before he left to attend law school
. He eventually became a U.S. senator from Connecticut
and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Another former Sun reporter was William Redding Jr., later a reporter at the Evening Star in Washington and an editor at Newsweek
and Forbes
. Hank Burchard was a reporter at the Sun before joining the Washington Post, where he worked for more than 30 years. Vin Suprynowicz
was a managing editor of the Sun during the late 1970s.
Herman J. Obermayer was publisher of the Sun until it was sold to the Sun Gazette Papers 1988. Obermayer has recently written a personal memoir about the late Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist
, Rehnquist: A Personal Portrait of the Distinguished Chief Justice of the United States. In 1977 Obermayer became the first openly Jewish member of the Washington Golf and Country Club.
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
published in Arlington, Virginia, until 1998. For much of its life, it was a six-day-a-week broadsheet
Broadsheet
Broadsheet is the largest of the various newspaper formats and is characterized by long vertical pages . The term derives from types of popular prints usually just of a single sheet, sold on the streets and containing various types of material, from ballads to political satire. The first broadsheet...
, published Monday through Saturday, that emphasized local news.
Its legacy can be seen in the Arlington public library
Public library
A public library is a library that is accessible by the public and is generally funded from public sources and operated by civil servants. There are five fundamental characteristics shared by public libraries...
, which has maintained a collection of the Sun's "Then and Now" series about Arlington landmark
Landmark
This is a list of landmarks around the world.Landmarks may be split into two categories - natural phenomena and man-made features, like buildings, bridges, statues, public squares and so forth...
s and history. These began appearing in the Sun in the 1950s and continued, on and off, through the 1980s.
The Suns corporate descendant, Sun Gazette Newspapers, was sold to American Community Newspapers in 2005.
The Sun drew national attention in the late 1970s when owner Herman J. Obermayer said the Sun would print the name of accusers in rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
cases that came to trial, out of a sense of "fairness" between the two sides. Time magazine
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
reported that Obermayer's policy was “hotly denounced by local feminists, police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
, prosecutor
Prosecutor
The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...
s, hospital
Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....
officials and nearly all the Sun readers who have written or telephoned Obermayer to comment.” Time quoted Benjamin C. Bradlee
Benjamin C. Bradlee
Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee is a vice president at-large of The Washington Post. As executive editor of the Post from 1968 to 1991, he became a national figure during the presidency of Richard Nixon, when he challenged the federal government over the right to publish the Pentagon Papers and...
, executive editor of the Washington Post, as saying, “It’s wrong. It’s misguided. We wouldn’t do it.”
History
The Sun began as The Arlington Sun in the 1930s. In 1957, new owners renamed it the Northern Virginia Sun “and moved the entire operation into a former A&P supermarket” at 3409 Wilson Boulevard.The new owners were mostly well-connected and well-off Democrats
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
"who had fought shoulder to shoulder in the [Adlai E.] Stevenson campaigns" in 1952 and 1956. Now they were waiting out the Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
years. The four principal partners were George W. Ball, later an under secretary of state in the Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
and Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
administrations; Philip M. Stern, a grandson of Sears, Roebuck
Sears, Roebuck and Company
Sears, officially named Sears, Roebuck and Co., is an American chain of department stores which was founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in the late 19th century...
chairman Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald
Julius Rosenwald was a U.S. clothier, manufacturer, business executive, and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for the Rosenwald Fund which donated millions to support the education of African American children in the rural South, as well...
and son of a president of New Orleans Cotton Exchange
New Orleans Cotton Exchange
The New Orleans Cotton Exchange was established in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1871 as a centralized forum for the trade of cotton. It operated in New Orleans until closing in 1964...
; Clayton Fritchey
Clayton Fritchey
Clayton Fritchey was an American journalist who spent many years in public service.Clayton Fritchey was born in 1904 in Bellefontaine, Ohio. At the age of 2 he moved to Baltimore. His reporting career began at age 19 and by age 21 he had become the managing editor of The Baltimore Post. In later...
, a journalist and Democratic operative who, as a reporter for the Cleveland Press
Cleveland Press
The Cleveland Press was a daily American newspaper published in Cleveland, Ohio from November 2, 1878, through June 17, 1982. From 1928 to 1966, the paper's editor was Louis Seltzer....
, had covered Eliot Ness
Eliot Ness
Eliot Ness was an American Prohibition agent, famous for his efforts to enforce Prohibition in Chicago, Illinois, and the leader of a legendary team of law enforcement agents nicknamed The Untouchables.- Early life :...
’s campaign to root out police corruption
Police corruption
Police corruption is a specific form of police misconduct designed to obtain financial benefits, other personal gain, or career advancement for a police officer or officers in exchange for not pursuing, or selectively pursuing, an investigation or arrest....
in Cleveland
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
; and Arnold Sagalyn, who signed on as assistant publisher. Stern and Fritchey were alumni of the New Orleans Item, Fritchey’s next career stop after Cleveland. Fritchey had been the editor in New Orleans, Stern a reporter and editorial writer.
Others who joined them as backers of the Sun included Gilbert Hahn, a Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
who was heir to the Hahn shoe store empire and chairman of the D.C. City Council.
"The investment proved to be a disastrous mistake from the beginning," historian James A. Bill wrote. "Ball and his three colleagues extended their losing streak from politics into the world of business."
They began with high hopes. “Their dream was to turn [the Sun] into a suburban success like Newsday
Newsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...
on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, whose concentrated circulation and affluent readership had managed to scare the large New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
newspapers,” the author Eleanor Lanahan wrote. But it was an uphill fight. For one thing, Arlington was not Long Island: the Washington dailies had deeper penetration in suburban Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
than the New York dailies did, and soon after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. By the time Stern and Fritchey were trying to create a Washington version of Newsday, readers’ habits were changing as early-evening television news undercut afternoon newspapers like the Sun, which later billed itself as the "daily hometown newspaper of Arlington, Falls Church
Falls Church, Virginia
The City of Falls Church is an independent city in Virginia, United States, in the Washington Metropolitan Area. The city population was 12,332 in 2010, up from 10,377 in 2000. Taking its name from The Falls Church, an 18th-century Anglican parish, Falls Church gained township status within...
and Fairfax
Fairfax, Virginia
The City of Fairfax is an independent city forming an enclave within the confines of Fairfax County, in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. Although politically independent of the surrounding county, the City is nevertheless the county seat....
." But the Sun could not keep up with Fairfax, one of the fastest-growing suburbs in the nation.
Compounding the problem, Ball and the Sun’s new other owners—along with some of the reporters they hired—were outsiders. Fritchey, for example, lived in the Georgetown
Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
Georgetown is a neighborhood located in northwest Washington, D.C., situated along the Potomac River. Founded in 1751, the port of Georgetown predated the establishment of the federal district and the City of Washington by 40 years...
section of Washington and was a regular on the dinner-party circuit there, not in Arlington. One of the reporters was Frances Lanahan, the daughter of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
. Lanahan’s daughter recounted how Frances Lanahan, known as Scottie, befriended a freshman congressman, John Brademas
John Brademas
John Brademas is an American politician and educator originally from Indiana. He served as Majority Whip of the United States House of Representatives for the Democratic Party from 1977 to 1981 at the conclusion of a twenty-year career as a member of the United States House of Representatives...
of Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
, who had been elected in 1958. Brademas said that Scottie “took me, then 31, under her wing and introduced me to the Washington society of which she was so active and vivid a part.” “She enthusiastically organized fundraising
Fundraising
Fundraising or fund raising is the process of soliciting and gathering voluntary contributions as money or other resources, by requesting donations from individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies...
parties for me . . . and I especially remember the great success of one that featured ‘Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary were an American folk-singing trio whose nearly 50-year career began with their rise to become a paradigm for 1960s folk music. The trio was composed of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers...
.’”
For lack of revenue
Revenue
In business, revenue is income that a company receives from its normal business activities, usually from the sale of goods and services to customers. In many countries, such as the United Kingdom, revenue is referred to as turnover....
, they had to run the Sun on a shoestring. “The staff … was young and underpaid,” or worse, unsophisticated and unaware. The nationally syndicated columnist Drew Pearson
Drew Pearson (journalist)
Andrew Russell Pearson , known professionally as Drew Pearson, was one of the best-known American columnists of his day, noted for his muckraking syndicated newspaper column "Washington Merry-Go-Round," in which he attacked various public persons, sometimes with little or no objective proof for his...
ran an item about Fritchey in 1958 that did not reflect well on the Sun’s staff. Gov. W. Averell Harriman
W. Averell Harriman
William Averell Harriman was an American Democratic Party politician, businessman, and diplomat. He was the son of railroad baron E. H. Harriman. He served as Secretary of Commerce under President Harry S. Truman and later as the 48th Governor of New York...
had called the Sun, looking for Fritchey. The person who took Harriman’s call did not know who Fritchey was.
By 1960, Fritchey left The Sun. “The paper had been losing money, and management decided that the readership had been too transient. Arlington was a temporary stop for airline stewardesses
Flight attendant
Flight attendants or cabin crew are members of an aircrew employed by airlines primarily to ensure the safety and comfort of passengers aboard commercial flights, on select business jet aircraft, and on some military aircraft.-History:The role of a flight attendant derives from that of similar...
, Pentagon employees and foreign service people who had no investment in the schools as most of their children weren’t educated there. Too few residents of Northern Virginia were calling it a home. Also, the Sun had never been able to attract major advertisers. Supermarket
Supermarket
A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...
s and department store
Department store
A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...
s had concentrated on the wider circulation of the metropolitan papers. Compounding the problem, in 1960 the newspaper union went on strike for higher wages and selected the Sun, as one of the weaker papers, to make its point. [The Sun] brought in scabs, which was unsettling for the liberal, pro-union management, who had to cross their picket line
Picket line
A picket line is a horizontal rope, along which horses are tied at intervals. The rope can be on the ground, at chest height , or overhead. The overhead form usually is called a high line....
s to get to work. The strike was so costly that it precipitated the sale of the paper.”
Ball's family "never forgot the enormity of the failure," according to historian James A. Bill. "Thirty years later, George would wince when the newspaper was mentioned. It was estimated that this white elephant
White elephant
A white elephant is an idiom for a valuable but burdensome possession of which its owner cannot dispose and whose cost is out of proportion to its usefulness or worth...
cost George Ball half a million dollars." Bill estimated the Sun's quarterly loss at $100,000 in 1961, after Ball, Stern, Fritchey and Sagakyn had severed their ties to the Sun.
Herman J. Obermayer, editor and publisher of the Long Branch Daily Record in New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, bought the Sun in 1963 and controlled it for 25 years. Like Stern and Fritchey, he was an alumnus of the New Orleans Item. He had worked there in the 1950s, as classified advertising
Classified advertising
Classified advertising is a form of advertising which is particularly common in newspapers, online and other periodicals which may be sold or distributed free of charge...
manager. Obermayer, a decorated World War II veteran who had graduated from Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
, had begun his career as a reporter on the Long Island Daily Press in Queens
Queens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
, New York.
In the early 1970s the Sun moved to a brick and concrete building at 1227 North Ivy Street. Vacated in 1990 when the paper was taken over by Sun Gazette Newspapers of Vienna, Va.
Vienna, Virginia
Vienna is a town in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, it had a population of 15,687. Significantly more people live in zip codes with the Vienna postal addresses bordered approximately by Interstate 66 on the south, Interstate 495 on the east, Route 7 to...
, the building is now a day care
Day care
Child care or day care is care of a child during the day by a person other than the child's legal guardians, typically performed by someone outside the child's immediate family...
center.
Former staff
Fritchey, who had been spokesman for Adlai E. Stevenson’s presidential campaign in 1952, went back to work for Stevenson in the Kennedy administration, when Stevenson was the chief United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
delegate to the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
. He hired Fritchey as director of public affairs for the United States mission to the U.N. Later Fritchey a nationally syndicated newspaper column. He retired in 1984.
Stern went on to found the Fund for Investigative Journalism. He also used his family foundation to advance causes and organizations he believed in. Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government....
described Stern as the "most creative, versatile and persistent philanthropist of our generation." His family foundation gave reporter Seymour M. Hersh a grant in 1969 when he was digging into the story of the My Lai Massacre
My Lai Massacre
The My Lai Massacre was the Vietnam War mass murder of 347–504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968, by United States Army soldiers of "Charlie" Company of 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the Americal Division. Most of the victims were women, children , and...
in Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
. Stern foundation money also went to the Government Accountability Project
Government Accountability Project
The Government Accountability Project is a leading United States whistleblower protection organization. Through litigating of whistleblower cases, publicizing concerns and developing legal reforms, GAP’s mission is to protect the public interest by promoting government and corporate accountability...
, Teamsters for a Democratic Union
Teamsters for a Democratic Union
Teamsters for a Democratic Union is a rank-and-file union democracy movement organizing to reform the International Brotherhood of Teamsters , or Teamsters. TDU was created out of the merger of the Professional Drivers Council and TDU in 1979...
, the Center for Science in the Public Interest
Center for Science in the Public Interest
Center for Science in the Public Interest is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit watchdog and consumer advocacy group focusing on nutritional education and awareness.-History and funding:...
and the Women's Legal Defense Fund, among others.
In the late 1950s the Sun’s constellation of well-connected reporters included Lanahan, who did investigative reporting
Investigative journalism
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, often involving crime, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Investigative journalism...
and covered Virginia politics. She and Fritchey carried on an affair while both worked at the Sun. “Many of their coworkers were well aware that Clayton and Scottie were in love,” Lanahan's daughter wrote.
Other reporters at the Sun when Stern and Fritchey were in charge included Helen Dewar
Helen Dewar
Helen Dewar was a reporter for The Washington Post for 25 years. She worked at the Post for 43 years, rising through the ranks to cover the United States Senate for a quarter of a century .Eric Pianin, a colleague and editor, noted: "She was also a brilliant student of the Senate...
, later a congressional reporter for The Washington Post; Marianne Means, later a political columnist for the Hearst syndicate; and Shirley Elder, later chief congressional correspondent for the Washington Star
Washington Star
The Washington Star, previously known as the Washington Star-News and the Washington Evening Star, was a daily afternoon newspaper published in Washington, D.C. between 1852 and 1981. For most of that time, it was the city's newspaper of record, and the longtime home to columnist Mary McGrory and...
. Dewar, who had just graduated from Stanford
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, joined the Sun after one week at the Washington Post in 1958. She covered education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
for two years before she went back to the Post in 1961.
Ralph Temples became executive editor in mid-1961. He had been executive city editor of the Palm Beach Post-Times in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
. From the mid-1960s to and the early 1970s, the paper's day-to-day coverage was supervised by Carol Griffee, who was initially city editor, then executive editor, according to an interview with her conducted for a University of Arkansas
University of Arkansas
The University of Arkansas is a public, co-educational, land-grant, space-grant, research university. It is classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a research university with very high research activity. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and is located in...
project on the Arkansas Gazette
Arkansas Gazette
The Arkansas Gazette, known as the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi River, and located from 1908 until its October 18, 1991 closing at the now historic Gazette Building, was for many years the newspaper of record for Little Rock and the State of Arkansas...
, where she worked as a reporter after she left the Sun. Griffee was the daughter of a makeup editor at the Evening Star in Washington and worked as a reporter at the Star starting in 1963, covering Fairfax County
Fairfax County, Virginia
Fairfax County is a county in Virginia, in the United States. Per the 2010 Census, the population of the county is 1,081,726, making it the most populous jurisdiction in the Commonwealth of Virginia, with 13.5% of Virginia's population...
and the Virginia General Assembly
Virginia General Assembly
The Virginia General Assembly is the legislative body of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the oldest legislative body in the Western Hemisphere, established on July 30, 1619. The General Assembly is a bicameral body consisting of a lower house, the Virginia House of Delegates, with 100 members,...
. She left the Star in 1966 and after working briefly on Capitol Hill, went to the Sun.
In 1971, Griffee arranged a leave of absence
Leave of absence
Leave of absence is a term used to describe a period of time that one is to be away from his/her primary job, while maintaining the status of employee...
and tried politics, campaigning for a seat on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors
Fairfax County Board of Supervisors
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, sometimes abbreviated as FCBS, is the governing body of Fairfax County; a county of over a million in Northern Virginia. The board has nine districts, and one at-large district which is always occupied by the Chair...
. She lost by 14 votes. She returned to the Sun, where, she said, "the publisher completely botched the switch-over from hot type
Hot metal typesetting
In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting refers to 19th-century technologies for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mold that has the shape of one or more glyphs...
to cold type
Phototypesetting
Phototypesetting was a method of setting type, rendered obsolete with the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing software, that uses a photographic process to generate columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper...
, and I was just--I was just a basket case. I was so tired, so sleep deprived, just so burned out, that I finally said, 'I've got to get out of here.'" She finally left at the end of 1972.
One of Griffee's reporters at the Sun was Christopher Dodd
Christopher Dodd
Christopher John "Chris" Dodd is an American lawyer, lobbyist, and Democratic Party politician who served as a United States Senator from Connecticut for a thirty-year period ending with the 111th United States Congress....
, who worked at the Sun before he left to attend law school
Law school
A law school is an institution specializing in legal education.- Law degrees :- Canada :...
. He eventually became a U.S. senator from Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Another former Sun reporter was William Redding Jr., later a reporter at the Evening Star in Washington and an editor at Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
and Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
. Hank Burchard was a reporter at the Sun before joining the Washington Post, where he worked for more than 30 years. Vin Suprynowicz
Vin Suprynowicz
Vin Suprynowicz is a U.S. libertarian columnist who writes editorials for the Las Vegas, Nevada based Las Vegas Review-Journal. He is the author of two nonfiction compilations of his newspaper columns: Send In the Waco Killers and The Ballad of Carl Drega...
was a managing editor of the Sun during the late 1970s.
Herman J. Obermayer was publisher of the Sun until it was sold to the Sun Gazette Papers 1988. Obermayer has recently written a personal memoir about the late Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist
William Rehnquist
William Hubbs Rehnquist was an American lawyer, jurist, and political figure who served as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States and later as the 16th Chief Justice of the United States...
, Rehnquist: A Personal Portrait of the Distinguished Chief Justice of the United States. In 1977 Obermayer became the first openly Jewish member of the Washington Golf and Country Club.