Volume 36, No. 3, 2019
Cindy Elmore is a professor in the School of Communication at East Carolina University. In an interview with Editorial Assistant Ashley Walter, she discusses her article about Terry Pettus, a reporter and editor for the Tacoma (Washington) Ledger, who led a successful strike against William Randolph Hearst’s Post-Intelligencer.
How did you first become interested in Terry Pettus and his involvement with the American Newspaper Guild?
A few years ago, I did research for two articles about the dismissal of two journalists from the Stars and Stripes military newspaper in American-occupied Japan in 1946. The two GIs, Barnard Rubin and Kenneth Pettus, were accused of “disloyalty” and of having pre-World War II communist ties, and the dismissals made considerable national news. When I obtained the FBI investigative file on Kenneth Pettus, it seemed clear that the agency was equally (or even more) interested in the Communist Party activities of Ken Pettus’ older brother, Terry Pettus, who also was a journalist. As a result, I began reading everything I could find about Terry Pettus, requested his FBI investigative file, and learned about the significance of his involvement in the 1936 American Newspaper Guild strike against the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. While much had been written about the strike, none had fully revealed the involvement of Pettus, and none had drawn upon all of my sources, including Pettus’ papers at the University of Washington, the Newspaper Guild Reporter, FBI investigative file, and Newspaper Guild archives specifically related to Pettus.
You argue that this research helps to fill a gap in journalism history by focusing on reporters instead of on powerful media owners. Why is this emphasis on reporters important?
In their work in the 1990s, historians Bonnie Brennen and Hanno Hardt contended that journalism history accounts of the years between World Wars I and II primarily focused on powerful media owners and managers rather than on rank and file journalists. In those years, Pettus was an ordinary reporter in a mid-sized city who came to see collective action as the way to help struggling journalists demoralized by Depression working conditions. Unlike media owners, Pettus had little power, yet he worked tirelessly to rouse and assert the collective power of journalists to achieve for themselves better pay, job security, and working conditions. Numerous accounts describe the influence of the powerful media owners of the period, such as William Randolph Hearst, Henry Luce, or Robert McCormick; and of famous journalists of the period, such as Walter Winchell, Heywood Broun, or Grantland Rice. But few fully explore the little-known but effective rank and file journalists who were also consequential to the profession during those years, such as Pettus.
You wrote that after Pettus left journalism in 1958, he became involved in social justice issues. What impact did he make in his new career?
Actually, this started earlier than 1958. Pettus’ work with the Newspaper Guild seems to have prompted decades of action in the interest of labor and political change, some of that while working for leftwing and communist publications. After leaving general interest newspapers in 1937, Pettus continued to work in support of labor, serving two years as Washington state chair of the CIO Political Action Committee, and writing occasionally for the Washington State CIO News. As a journalist, Pettus also continued to write about the interests of labor. Pettus told the FBI that he joined the Communist Party in 1938 because he felt no other party was independently supporting labor interests. He eventually worked for leftist publications because he felt that they were more independent than corporate-owned traditional media.
Pettus also spent years as a featured speaker at Seattle area events in support of social justice issues such as the need for city-funded child care centers for working mothers and the end of race-based employment discrimination. Later, he became an activist who worked for the cleanup of Seattle’s Lake Union and against highway and condominium development around the lake. Seattle Mayor Charles Royer would declare a Terry Pettus Day on March 7, 1982, two years before Pettus’ death at age eighty. Today, a Seattle park remains named for Terry Pettus.
What can journalism today learn from this labor history?
When it came to their own interests, journalists were powerless during most of the Depression. Many worked six days a week without overtime. Paid vacations and sick time were uncommon. They could, and often were, summarily fired for all kinds of reasons—not all of which had to do with the shattered economy. Many were unemployed. With rare exceptions, journalists today seem similarly powerless when it comes to their own job security or working conditions. With innumerable Internet outlets and so many journalist-wannabes willing to work for free or for little, the profession is fragmented and weak. The training, skills, and ethical norms that professional journalists hold generally go unrecognized by the public. Just as Terry Pettus and others learned in the 1930s, journalists’ only professional power today might lie in the collective.
What are additional resources for people who would like to learn more about Terry Pettus and the ANG?
- Terry Pettus Papers, 1927-1984, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections.
- Newspaper Guild Records, Wayne State University (see Folders labeled: Tacoma, 1934-35; and Tacoma, 1936).
- William E. Ames and Roger A. Simpson, Unionism or Hearst: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer Strike of 1936 (Seattle: Pacific Northwest Labor History Association, 1978).
- John A. Wolfard, “The History and Significance of the American Newspaper Guild Strike Against the Seattle Post-Intelligencer” (M.A. thesis, University of Washington, 1937).