From Times to Sun

One day a couple of months ago a wiry, bristly man with large ears and a happy Irish face strode into the editorial offices of the New York Sun and asked for a job. The Sun's executives snapped the applicant up. He was mnemonic John Kieran, for 16 years sports columnist for the New York Times, for four and a half years a Shakespeare quoter, birdlore expert, Latin scholar, jingle singer and general know-it-all of Information, Please.

Last week the Sun announced smugly: ". . . exciting news for New Yorkers . . . John Kieran is coming. . . . His daily column 'One Small Voice' will be limited only by the scope and fertility of the Kieran mind. ..." The fertile Kieran mind had sprouted the seed which has been observed in other sportswriters, notably Heywood Broun and Westbrook Pegler--the desire to break away from the confinements of sports columning, to reach into the grab bag of memory, to write about anything and everything.

John Kieran had long admired Reporter Robert (Bob) Davis, the evening Sun's columnist who roamed the globe and wrote what he pleased. Bob Davis' death three months ago left a gap in the Sun's pages which Kieran felt he could fill.

Money was no factor in his decision to change, even though the Sun will probably pay less than the approximate $12,000 a year he has made on the Times, for Kieran makes a reputed $500 a week from Information, Please. He has also earned fame out of his Information, Please broadcasts, but the aloof Times has always looked down its nose at such programs and considered it an upstart in the field of information.

Kieran's own formal explanation of why he quit the Times: what with newspapering and pleasing with information (not counting increasingly frequent, nonprofitable radio appearances selling war bonds, etc.) he has been much too busy to do the traveling to sports events his Times job required. Sports fans had noticed his columns getting more erudite and less sporty. Whereas he did seven columns a week for the Times he will write only five for the Stm, and will be able to do them at home, sending his copy to the Sun office and to the Bell Syndicate, which will distribute the new column nationally.

Times readers found out about Kieran's departure only indirectly--when Sports Writer Arthur Daley began authoring Kieran's "Sports of the Times" column. Even then readers may have failed to notice the difference, because Daley's first effort was extremely Kieranesque. In a discussion of the Oregon State and New York City College basketball teams, both called "Beavers," Columnist Daley referred to an Oregon beaver as Castor Ore-goniensis and to a City College beaver as Castor Nova Eboracensis.

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