Scions Of The Times

How nine sons of Dartmouth found work at"the best newspaper in the world."

Last fall, three bylined stories by Richard Halloran, David E. Rosenbaum, and David K. Shipler hit the front page of the New York Times on the same day. Each story reported important news, the writing was clear and concise, and the bylines belonged to three Dartmouth alumni.

Halloran '51, a military correspondent, Rosenbaum '63, a reporter in the Washington bureau, and Shipler '64, chief diplomatic correspondent, are three of nine Dartmouth graduates at the Times. Their six colleagues, all of whom tend to wax eloquent about their undergraduate education, include some of the paper's most notable writers and editors. They include Vincent Canby '45, chief film critic; Nelson S. Bryant Jr. '46, who writes the "Outdoors" column; Christopher S. Wren '57, assistant foreign editor; Abbott C. Combes IV '66, deputy style editor; Douglas H. Martin '72, general assignment reporter in New York; and John H. Cushman '76, Pentagon correspondent.

.Assignments change from time to time on a paper the size of the Times, but on any given day these Dartmouth bylines may appear anywhere in any issue.

Dick Halloran with an eyewitness report of an assassination in Korea or a terrorist bombing in japan; Chris Wren on nerve-wracking trips out with PLO guerillas in Lebanon and Jordan or trekking the Great Wall of China into Manchuria; Dave Shipler at the Kremlin or the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem; or Doug Martin rubbing noses with Eskimos in the Yukon or writing a feature from Nome, Alaska ("there are no roads to Nome").

Vincent Canby in the darkened corner of a movie theater, reviewing more than 150 films in an average year—and seeing another 50 "just to keep in shape"; Jack Cushman, spun away from his Washington desk for a minesweeping tour with the Iranian navy off Khor Fakham or covering military operations with the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf.

Over the years, Dave Rosenbaum covering the sweat and strain of political campaigns, Watergate, and the Iran-Contra hearings; Kit Combes, who started the "About Men" feature in the Times Sunday Magazine section, almost submerged by the deluge of 100 freelance contributions a week; and Nelson Bryant, dressed in warm wool and pac-boots, reporting from a duck blind in Maryland or the College Grant near the Canadian border.

How did these nine wise fellows, graduates of a New England liberal arts college which doesn't offer a single course in journalism, become, newspapermen?

They were not a hum-drum hunch of undergraduates. Three were Phi Beta Kappa; Shipler won the Grimes English Prize; Bryant won a fellow- ship for graduate work at Brown; Martin took two undergraduate prizes and two graduate scholarships; and Wren won English honors and a Rotary Fellowship.

Five of the nine went on to serve in the military, and three of them-Bryant, Halloran and Wren— were paratroopers. Bryant was twice wounded in action in Europe during World War Two. Halloran, the son of the late Rear Admiral Paul James Halloran '19, writes about all of the armed forces today.

And Cushman, whose father is a retired army lieutenant general, covers the Pentagon.

"It was a major hurdle," he says, "moving over to the Times. I was interviewed several times by (theneditor) Harrison Salisbury who I think thought I was too show biz. 'Do you think you can write the kind of English we want?' he asked me. I think he expected me to show up for work in an orange jacket and checked pants."

Nelson Bryant who owns ten fly rods, six surf rods and eight conventional baitcasting rods, five shotguns and eight rifles, three canoes, and several pairs of snowshoes was a reporter for the Claremont Daily Eagle, and later its managing editor, for more than 16 years before signing on with the Times in 1967. "With a wife and four kids, it was tough paying the bills in Claremont," he says, "so we returned to the Vineyard where I spent a year building docks. By then, all the docks and bulkheads began to look alike and I began to think of other things.

"A friend called one day to say that the fellow who wrote the column I now do for the Times had expired and that I should apply for the job. I did so and was told by the sports editor that there were 60-odd applications ahead of me. He nonetheless asked me to submit some samples of my work, and after a visit to New York I was hired."

Dick Halloran, after a three-year stint in the army, worked for Business Week and the Washington Post, ineluding a tour tor each in Japan that produced a book, before joining the Times in 1969. He was a diplomatic and general assignment reporter inWashington and then Was assignedto Tokyo as Times bureau chief.(During his tenure with the Times inTokyo, Halloran says, "I got intoevery section of the paper except real estate.") Four years later, he returned to Washington where he became, successively, energy correspondent, defense correspondent, and, in 1985, a military correspondent. He has also written a book on the nation's armed forces.

Chris Wren wrote his way to the Times via Look magazine (senior editor covering civil rights and four trips to the war in Vietnam and Cambodia) and Newsweek, where he was a general editor writing on national affairs. He moved to the Times in 1973. "Some of my colleagues thought I was nuts to take a cut in rank and salary'," he says, "but it proved to be the smartest thing I ever did."

Eight months — and countless homicides, bank holdups and drug busts—later, Wren was sent abruptly to Moscow because he knew Russian (which he had studied extensively at Dartmouth). After four years in Moscow (three as bureau chief), he was assigned to Cairo where he covered the Middle East for three years. Then followed a year's paid sabbatical at Cambridge University to learn Chinese and three years as Times bureau chief in Beijing, and two years as Ottawa bureau chief. In October 1986, he was asked to return to New York as assistant foreign editor. "There was one stretch," he says, "when I had the family and leaking faucets in three different countries at the same time —the U.S., China, and Canada." Nonetheless, he found time to be author or co-author of four books, and he is working on a fifth.

In 1965, while working for the St. Petersburg Times, Dave Rosenbaum won a Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship for study abroad, and he opted for London. Washington beckoned in 1967, where he wrote for the Congressional Quarterly before being tapped by the Times in 1968. He has been in the Washington bureau for all but three of the past 20 years.

Dave Shipler's path to the Times was short and direct. Following graduation and two years in the navy, he joined the Times as a news clerk. He was promoted to city staff reporter two years later and soon started winning prizes: from the American Political Science Association, the New York Newspaper Guild, and the Society of the Silurians. He did his tour in Vietnam and then studied Russian in preparation for a four-year assignment in Moscow, the last two as bureau chief.

"Chris Wren and I were there, at the same time," he recalls. "We didn't Know of our Dartmouth connection until one very cold day when one of us said something about the temperature being worse than during college days in New Hampshire. 'Don't tell me?' Chris said. 'Yes, Dartmouth.' We had a nice little reunion."

From Moscow, Shipler served five years as bureau chief in Jerusalem. Out of those two assignments, Russia and the Holy Land, came two prizewinning books: "Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams," which won an Overseas Press Club Award in 1983; and "Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in the Promised Land," which won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 1987.

Kit Combes' journalism career included stints on the Quincy, Massachusetts, Patriot Ledger, stringing for Time magazine, and writing and editing at the Washington Post and Washington Star. When the Star folded in 1981, he moved to the Times in New York, where he has since taken numerous assignments.

Life after Dartmouth for Doug Martin included a Woodrow Wilson fellowship at Princeton, the Wall Street Journal in Dallas and Philadelphia, and a short spell with the Chicago Tribune. lie joined the Times as energy correspondent in 1980, served four years as Times bureau chief in Toronto, and now writes the column, "About New York."

Jack Cushman, who had been at the Times in Washington less than two years, got there because he wanted to live in New York City. "I worked for an obscure trade paper in New York," he says, "covering commodities—not knowing much about the subject. Eventually I was transferred to Washington and eventually became editor of Defense Week. Happily I was on the scene when the Pentagon slot opened and I got the job."

What's it like working for the Times? Not surprisingly, the answers tend toward the superlative.

Nelson Bryant — outdoorsman, master carpenter, poet—shakes his head about his job at the Times. "I Choose my own assignments most of lie time, and get paid for doing what gives me pleasure," he says. "This in eludes great freedom in my approach to the subject." Each December for the past several years the Times has run a Christmas essay or poem by Bryant (who describes himself as "a plodder who once dreamed of becoming another Walt Whitman"). "I know of no other newspaper in the land," he says, "that allows its out-,door columnist to turn his hand to what purports to be serious verse."

"Being a foreign correspondent," says Halloran, "is the most wonderful of all jobs in the craft, maybe in the world. The reason: even with modern communications, the nearest boss is far away and you are about as free as you can be, without being independently wealthy, to shape your own professional life. I have a reputation, not admired by some, for being a loner and preferring to work by myself. I detest mob journalism, and foreign correspondence is usually where one is most free to do his own thing."

Says Wren: "How many other professions pay you to satisfy the farthest recesses of your curiosity and on an expense account? Being a foreign correspondent is the best job in the world. But it's like being an astronaut: after orbiting out there, you eventually have to come down to Earth."

And Dave Rosenbaum sums it up for all of them: "If you are a professional journalist and want to work for the best newspaper in the world, you work for the New York Times." Memories of Dartmouth tend to be equally enthusiastic.

"Dartmouth taught me to think for myself," says Chris Wren, "and to thrive in isolation as a foreign correspondent. A good liberal arts education makes for a far better reporter than conventional journalism courses. It is no accident that three top Times correspondents I met abroad - Shipler, Halloran, and Martin-all came out of Dartmouth."

Dave Shipler: "I loved Dartmouth with a passion, and its solid liberal arts background gave me what I needed. Arthur Dewing's writing course, for example, was one of a kind. Each of his students wrote something, gave it to him during a weekly meeting (one on one) in his office, and then had to sir listening to him read it aloud. Boy, that's an education!"

"I had a number of professors who made a large impact," says Nelson Bryant: "Alex Laing, Tom Vance, Jack Hurd, and Harry Bond."

"I like to think that Dartmouth did for me," says Dick Halloran, "what President Dickey said it would. Dartmouth's mission was to prepare me to live, not to make a living."

"I loved Dartmouth and its broad liberal arts education," says Dave Rosenbaum. "It meant more to my growth than any other experience I've had."

The Dartmouth byline in the Times was nicely characterized by Nelson Bryant, who lives yearround on his native Martha's Vine- yard. "I go to the office about once a month," he says, "to touch bases with my editors and the city and to meet newcomers in the sports department. We have a large staff, some of whom I never really get to know very well."

"Well, everyone knows you," says a listener. "You have lots of readers." "Jesus, that's good. I thought my wife was the only one."

Chief film critic Vincent Canby '45 sees 200 movies a year.

Nels Bryant '46 went from dock builder to "Outdoors" columnist.

Military correspondent Halloran '51 has published three books.

Chris Wren '57 wrote his way to the Times via Look magazine.

Washingtonian, Dave Rosenbaum '63 covered the Iran scandal.

Pulitzer winner Dave Shipler '64 left the Times to write books.

Kit Combes '66 started Sunday's "About Men" section.

Former Toronto bureau chief Doug Martin '72 at the Bronx Zoo

A general's son, Jack Cushman '72 covers the Pentagon.

Fritz Hier is a retired tree farmer in Cornish Flat, New Hampshire. Nardi Reeder Campion also contributed to this article. Since this piece was written, Christopher Wren has been transferred to the Times office in johannasburg, South Africa, where he is Bureau Chief. David Shipler has left the Times to write books.

"If you are a professional journalist and want to work for the bestnewspaper in the world you work for the New York Times."