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Show WHO'S NEWS THIS WEEK By LEMUEL F. PARTON XTEW YORK. Two or three years ago, I was one ol a group of newspaper men arguing about who was the best reporter who ever r n worked around Roy Burton here 0ne old.tim. Knew How to er was holding out Fan Up Story for Ry Burton. whom he had known on the Brooklyn Eagle In the nineties. Burton, he said, was the best leg-man and digger, the most fearless, and the most gifted In fanning up a story out of nothing at all. He knew make-up, too, said the oldster. The diligent reporter has been duly rewarded. He is the Sir Pom-erojr Pom-erojr Burton whose magnificent French chateau the duke and duchess of Windsor were looking over recently. With the Northcliffe papers In London, he became a multi-millionaire, as he transformed British journalism jour-nalism with daring American techniques, tech-niques, lie became a British citizen in 1914 and was knighted In 1923. In addition to his vast newspaper Interests, he is a magnate of electric elec-tric power and utilities. He was a printer's devil on his father's newspaper in Youngstown, Ohio, and, at the age of twelve, was knocking about country printshops in Ohio on the same job. He became a compositor on the Brooklyn Eagle. Hearing of a vacancy on the news staff, he persuaded the city editor to give him a try at reporting. He hired evening clothes to cover a society function. There, Colonel . Hester, owner of Boss Liked the Eagle was Youth in tremendously im- Hired Tails Pressed with the personable young man with whom he was talking, and thought he had met him somewhere. some-where. Young Burton did not remind re-mind the colonel that he had seen the young man in a printer's apron a few days before. He became city editor and managing man-aging editor of the Eagle, held important im-portant executive positions with the World and the New York Journal and was taken to England by Lord Northcliffe in 1904. Ten years later, he owned all but a few of the Daily Mail shares not owned by Lord Northcliffe. In the World war, he virtually headed the organization of British propaganda, and many of the most damaging anti-German stories were attributed to him. His enemies charged that he had "debauched British journalism with degrading American sensationalism." His friends insisted he had enlivened en-livened and regenerated it. He makes an occa-Sir occa-Sir Pomeroy sional t r i p to Visits U. S. America with a With Valets staff f valets and secretaries, suave, dressy and still fit and impressive at seventy-two, with more than a touch of British accent. Over here, he always hated the name Pomeroy and shortened it to Roy, but picked it up again in England. Eng-land. He had been named for "Brick" Pomeroy, the cyclonic journalistic jour-nalistic disturber of the latter half of the last century, and he held Mr. Pomeroy in low esteem. Pomeroy Pom-eroy was almost, but not quite, a winner. From a Wisconsin crossroads, he rammed around the country in newspaper and financial brawls, and, in his old age, just through sheer animal spirits, started plugging plug-ging a tunnel through the Rocky mountains, at Georgetown, Colo. He was flattened by the '93 depression de-pression and died soon after, with nothing to show for his life's work but a hole in the ground. Then it was discovered that the tunnel had gouged into fabulous mineral wealth in Kelso mountain. Eight years ago, the tunnel went on through the mountain, as the Moffatt tunnel. REPORTING the return of Poult-ney Poult-ney Bigelow from a visit to his friend, the former kaiser, and his fervent approval of dictators, has become a matter Mr. Bigelow 0f annual routine. Has a Yen It is an old story, r 17 but the freshness for Fuehrers an(J vehemence ol Mr. Bigelow's disgust with democracy democ-racy and enthusiasm for fuehrers always makes it interesting. He is the patriarch of Malden-on-the-Hudson, with relatives and descendants, de-scendants, down to great-grandchildren, all up and down the river. He will be eighty-three years old on September 10. His father, John Bigelow, Bige-low, was American minister to France under Abraham Lincoln. He hunted birds eggs with the kaiser, forming a lifetime friendship, friend-ship, broken only by the war, which he charged the kaiser with having started He recanted afterward and the two old men meet annually to salute "Der Tag" when only the all-wise all-wise and all-just shaU rule again. Consolidated News Features. WNU Service. |