AMERICAN WOMAN JOURNALIST

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27150, 21 September 1953, Page 2

AMERICAN WOMAN JOURNALIST

Mrs Esther Tufty Visits N.Z. WORLD TOUR ON STATE DEPARTMENT GRANT (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, September 19. Mrs Esther Van Wagoner Tufty, an internationally-known American journalist, whose Washington news agency serves more than 300 American newspapers and a number of Dutch magazines, arrived at Wellington by Solent flying-boat from Sydney today. She has just been appointed Washington correspondent of the Australian Consolidated Press.

Mrs Tufty is making a world trip on a United States State Department grant. During her 10 days in New Zealand, she hopes to “find Out what makes the country tick, and take some of that back to the United States with me.”

On Thursday, she will address the annual conference of the New Zealand Newspaper Proprietors’ Association on the job of covering news in Washington, where 700 reporters work. She will also discuss the changing scene in the American newspaper world.

Television had injured the film industry, said Mrs Tufty, in an interview. Since the advent of television 5000 cinemas had closed in the United States. It had not injured the newspapers. “Indeed, many newspaper proprietors, bored with the old medium, have bought television stations,” she said. “They are like boys with a new toy, and are very keen on the television news services they provide.” Interest in Foreign News Discussing changes in the American •scene, Mrs Tufty said it was amazing ihow internationally-minded the man in the street was becoming in the •United States. The huge provisions made in the American Budget for helping other countries had quickened the individual citizen’s interest. This was reflected in the American press which, though it naturally played up local news, did try to get the gist of the international news into its newspapers.

The front page of most American newspapers now comprised about 50 per cent, overseas news and 50 per cent. local and home news, Mrs Tufty said.

Last year, Mrs Tufty spent about three months in Korea. During World War 11, she was an American correspondent in Britain. She is now president of the Women’s National Press Club in Washington. Mrs Tufty was formerly editor of a newspaper in Evansville, Indiana. She went to Washington 16 years ago as a correspondent for a number of Michigan newspapers. She then formed the Tufty News Bureau.