William Woo

     WAIS welcomes a new WAISer, William Woo, for many years editor-in-chief of the important Saint Louis Post Dispatch. He is now a Professor in Stanford's Department of Communication, with which we have frequent contact, especially in regard to the Knight Fellows. WAIS stresses the importance of the "Fourth Estate," especially in our society where the first three estates are busy hiding or distorting the facts in the interest of "politics," to abuse an honorable term. WAIS welcomes honest and informed individuals from the whole band of the ideological spectrum. William Woo explains his position:
     On matters of public policy, my place is somewhat to the left of the center line. The Post-Dispatch, whose policies I watched over from the jobs of editor of the editorial page and later editor in chief, was an unapologetically liberal paper. Many's the time when conservative readers would address their letters of complaint to The Editor, Pravda Dispatch . . . . Yet, from George Kennan's day and probably before, we were a containment paper -- containment being defined as keeping the USSR in check, though we favored self-determination, which led us to oppose involvement in Indochina as far back as 1954. That was the year the great Daniel Fitzpatrick won a Pulitzer Prize for his cartoon, "Deeper into the Swamp," which accompanied an editorial entitled "A War To Stay Out Of."

Ronald Hilton - 10/25/99