Editors can be heroes, too

I’m finishing up the “Clan of the Fiery Cross” storyline from the Superman radio show of 1946, and it’s changed my whole impression of Perry White.

In earlier episodes that I’d listened to, White seemed to be somewhat old and gullible. Among other things, he gave that Kent guy a job without seeing any samples of his writing, easily tricked by a promise of a story that Kent learned about by eavesdropping on a phone call.

But in taking on cross-burning bigots, White showed what he was made of. (OK, so he also got himself kidnapped and almost killed.)

Read all about it and hear the story over at my other blog, JHeroes.com: Newspaper Heroes on the Air.

For some more serious educational value, I included links to information about real-life editors whose heroism on the same theme was recognized a few years later with the Pulitzer Prize.

About Bob Stepno

mild-mannered reporter who fell deeper into computers and the Web during three trips through graduate school in the 1980s and 1990s, then began teaching journalism, media studies and Web production, most recently as a faculty member at Radford University.

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Posted in editors, oldtime radio, Pulitzer Prize