In Annenberg’s day

Nancy Sweeten sounds like my kind of woman, and I’m sorry I missed her in my four years at Penn (1957-61). But I didn’t miss Craig and I’m sure he was glad to see me go off to Honolulu. As Gilbert Seldes’ "gofer", I crisscrossed the continent telling all the old Journalism School brass how great we were going to be.

At the first meeting of the Annenberg School’s board I passed the pre-meeting minutes by teasing Walter Annenberg by asking him if the comics section he had expanded the day before was his idea of "raising media standards." Gaylord P. Harnwell, then Penn’s president, looked like he was on the brink of stroke. Walter finally smiled, so unaccustomed to being teased are wealthy brutes.

The next year my Greenbelt Knoll neighbor Leon Sullivan mocked me at the community pool one Saturday about the refusal of the Inky to print a word about his Tasteekake boycott. Bright and early Monday I was being frisked in the elevator to Annenberg’s Broad Street eyrie (my first and only such experience in my boring life!). At first he was speechless. Then he called in his exec ed, E.Z. Dimitman, whose response was, "We hired a colored boy last summer, but he never cut the mustard."

I allowed as that had nothing to do with Leon’s complaint and informed them that The Reporter was running a story the following week and that if they had any interest in raising standards, they’d beat them to that story. They didn’t. And Craig gave up on me as a front man.

Of course, it was the end of my A School career.