Gobind Behari Lal:
By Padmini Patwardhan Southern Illinois University Carbondale Submitted
for presentation to the American Journalism Historians Association
Annual Convention,
October 4-6, San Diego, California Gobind Behari Lal: The Gentle Indian Firebrand of
American Science Journalism
Abstract Gobind Behari Lal was science editor
(and science editor emeritus) from 1925 to 1982 of the Hearst group’s
San Francisco Examiner,
New York American Weekly and Universal Service.
Lal’s career spans the period when popularization of science was one
of the recurring themes in American mass media. Despite the extensive
research on science journalism in the United States, few studies mention
Lal, the “gentle firebrand’’ trusted by scientists
and respected by editors and peers alike. Yet Lal’s contribution
is evident from his 1937 Pulitzer Prize for reporting, 1946 Westinghouse
Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
and 1958 American Medical Association Distinguished Layman Award.
Based largely on Lal’s oral history interviews conducted by the Regional
Oral History Office, Berkeley, California, the study highlights the
twin themes of “science for the people” and “liberation of humanity”
that characterized his life and work. It also examines the influences
that shaped these views and the various factors that contributed to
the content, form and style of his science writing.
Gobind Behari Lal: The Gentle Indian Firebrand
[1]
of American Science Journalism
Introduction He was courtly. Just barely over five feet tall, he would
bend a little forward to better hear another person. He customarily
had a nice word for everyone.
[2]
Sometimes, in his later years, dressed in his dark
suit and looking a bit owlish, he might appear to be dozing at a press
conference. But then, at just the right moment, would come that clear
voice with the distinctive accents of a far-away culture, and the
question would illuminate the essential qualities of what everyone
had been groping to understand.
[3]
Unassuming, yet tenacious in his pursuit of a story,
he was on a journalistic mission for most of his sixty years in the
mainstream of American journalism: “making science a culture for the
people.”
[4]
Gobind Behari Lal was science editor (and science editor emeritus
after retirement) for the Hearst group’s San Francisco Examiner, New York American Weekly and Universal Service from 1925 until his death from
cancer in1982.
[5]
Lal’s career in American journalism spanned the
period during which popularization of science was one of the recurring
themes in the American mass media. In the early years of the 20th
century, a flood of new discoveries and inventions in various scientific
fields, and
gradual awareness of the need to demystify science and develop a rational
American spirit, led the print media to assume a significant role
in the scientific socialization of Americans. However, it was not
until the 1920s that a band of specialized science reporters, to whom
Lal belonged, emerged, leading to a remarkable improvement in the
quality of science reporting.
[6]
Eventually, as more and more newspapers began to
include specialized science writers on their staff, improved standards
in science writing were observed.
[7]
By the nineteen thirties, this small but select
group of professional science writers,
[8]
were effectively countering the charges of sensationalism
of science in the media with responsible, accurate science coverage.
Despite the extensive documentation of the development of
science journalism in the United States during this period,
[9]
very few studies mention Lal,
[10]
the “gentle firebrand’’ trusted by scientists
and respected by editors and peers alike. While similar success
stories are not uncommon in American journalism history, what makes
Lal’s remarkable is that it he worked in journalism at a time when
Asians, and successful ones at that, were rare in mainstream American
media.
[11]
Lal, or “ Gobi” as he was affectionately known
to colleagues and friends,
[12]
not only established himself as part of this core
group of professional science writers in the vanguard
of the popular science movement,
but went on to win several awards, including a Pulitzer Prize for
reporting.
[13]
Several other pieces of evidence point to the importance of
Lal’s contribution to science journalism. Besides the 1937 Pulitzer,
he won numerous other awards, including the George Westinghouse Award
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1946,
and the American Medical Association Distinguished Layman Award in
1958.
[14]
He was also a founder (and president in 1940) of
the National Association of Science Writers.
[15]
During his long career he interviewed at least
16 Nobel laureates, including Albert Einstein, whom he admired immensely.
[16]
Lal’s science writing covered a wide variety of subjects:
from psychology to cosmology and medicine, indicating his ability
to grasp a wide range of subjects. He wrote with understanding, clarity,
simplicity and style, and was one of the first to report and interpret
pioneering advances in cancer research.
[17]
In his profile in Who’s
Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners, and in various newspaper obituaries
in 1983, he is reported as possibly being the first journalist in
America to use the term “science writer” with his byline.
[18]
Significance
and Purpose of Study
Despite
the evidence above, Lal’s frequent omission from historical research
in science journalism appears surprising. At a time when scientists
were generally suspicious about the ability of journalists to present
scientific developments with accuracy and understanding, a handful
of journalists like Lal established and developed real friendships
within the scientific community -- and maintained journalistic norms
and reporting standards. Focusing on Lal’s contribution to the Popular
Science movement within the context of the development of American
science journalism, this study documents Lal’s six decades in journalism,
and the historical, philosophical and cultural influences that shaped
his writing. To be more specific, the investigation and analysis revolve
around the following research questions:
·
What were Lal’s unique contributions to the development of
science writing in the United States?
·
What were his views on science journalism as a profession?
·
How was his writing influenced by the major scientific developments
of the period, in terms of recurring themes or issues covered? What
approach to science journalism emerges from his writing: for e.g.
‘popular science’ as information, education, or entertainment?
·
In what ways did Lal’s ethnicity influence his professional
and personal life? Method Lal’s own words, through a series of interviews conducted
in1983 by the Regional Oral History Office at Berkeley, California,
are the primary source for this study.
[19]
Other primary archival sources include Lal’s unresearched
papers, which this study did not access.
[20]
However, some unpublished notes and published documents
were also made available by the Regional Oral History Office. In addition,
a few anecdotal telephone interviews with the writer’s family -- to
corroborate some of the facts and dates --were conducted. A limited
textual analysis of Lal’s own work, based on a sampling of articles
written for the San Francisco Examiner, New York American Weekly and other publications, was also carried out. To provide
the appropriate cultural context for the analysis, the study also
drew upon the considerable body of research in science journalism.
Formative Influences A curious blend of the East and West, Lal appeared to have
straddled the two worlds with consummate ease. Recapturing the formative
influences of his childhood in India, he described his privileged
upbringing, unusual education, and the political influences that shaped
his lifelong concern with the ideals of freedom and the “Goodness”
of science.
[21]
Lal’s Indian
Childhood Born in an orthodox Hindu family on October 9, 1889 in Delhi,
Lal was the youngest of seven children. His early life reflected the
influence of the British Raj on the upbringing of upper class Indians
at the time.
[22]
Childhood appeared to have been idyllic; his father
was a high administrative official in the princely state of Bikaner,
in Rajasthan.
[23]
The influence of his father and an older brother,
Brij Mohan Lal, painter and artist, is evident from Lal’s account.
Despite being a fairly orthodox man, Lal’s father appeared to have
been somewhat unusual: a scholar of Indian languages, Arabic, and
old Sanskrit medicine,
[24]
as well as a firm believer in modern education.
[25]
He was also deeply interested in modern science,
and was “a very great believer in taking from the English what they
considered good things…[insisting] that all the children should get
vaccinated.”
[26]
The family decided not to send Lal to the local school because
“it was not good enough for [me].”
[27]
The entire family, and especially his brother,
became his tutors; as a result, Lal got an unusual liberal education
in early childhood, giving him freedom to roam the hallways of history
and knowledge. By all accounts it seemed to have shaped his life and
his later belief that science was not restricted to a particular field.
As interviewer Riess pointed out, for Lal “science included everything.”
[28]
By the time he was eight or nine years old, home-schooled
Lal had finished reading a text book of algebra and a book of Euclid.
[29]
Additional food for thought was provided by reading
books authored by Samuel Smiles [Duty,
Character, Thrift], and primers on physics, chemistry, and logic
by Jevens, published by the Royal Society in London. “[T]hose were
all wonderful books, very simply written, and those were my readers.”
[30]
Lal also found time to take in a bit of history
by reading simple pictorial accounts about the lives of great men
… Alexander the Great, Socrates, Plato, John Stuart Mill, and the
scientist Edward Jenner, who discovered vaccination.
[31]
When Lal was ten years old, his father retired from the administration
of Bikaner and moved back to Delhi. At the age of twelve, Lal entered
an exclusive high school in Delhi run by Englishmen, St. Stephen’s
Educational College and School, as a junior.
[32]
This was his first exposure to the formal school
system, and his first direct contact with Englishmen and Christianity,
[33]
after the comparative isolation of a remote Rajasthan
princely state. Even at this early age, Lal’s predilection for facts, his rational questioning mind, and his eye for detail are revealed through an anecdote that he recounted from this phase of his education. The precocious thirteen-year-old applied knowledge acquired in geology class to quiz his English teacher on the origin of the world as described in the first book of Genesis. Lal asked, “ we learned that the rocks are millions of years old; but here it says that the world was created 4,400 years before Christ, six thousand years ago. How can it be?” [34] Lal graduated from school when he was fourteen. In 1905, at
the age of sixteen, he was admitted to St Stephen’s College, Delhi.
[35]
Like most Indian youth at the time, in college
he was drawn into the nationalistic movement that was sweeping through
India. Lal himself considered this a major turning point in his own
life.
[36]
During this phase he came under the influence of
a radical Indian nationalist, Har Dayal,
[37]
whose political activism seems to have fired Lal’s
imagination, signaling the beginning of his active participation in
the movement. It is interesting that the liberally educated Lal viewed
this struggle for Indian independence in the broader context of similar
movements throughout the world.
[38]
In subsequent years, his experience with the Indian
liberation movement was to form the core of the themes that dominated
much of his writing: science and freedom, the association between
the two, and science as liberator of humanity. The Berkeley
Years By Lal’s own account, Har Dayal, who had fled to the United
States to escape imminent arrest for his nationalistic activism, was
such a strong influence in his life, that he willingly followed his
mentor to the University of California at Berkeley on a graduate scholarship
in 1912, arriving with little more than a liberal Indian education,
and a zealous devotion to the Indian cause.
[39]
Lal recalled Berkeley as an intellectually stimulating
experience, responsible for fostering his keen interest in developments
at the frontiers of knowledge.
[40]
Despite his obvious interest in scientific subjects
from an early age, he was unable to pursue the study of science at
Berkeley, because“[he] didn’t have money for laboratory work.”
[41]
Taking mostly liberal arts/social science courses,
he still managed to attend almost every free lecture he could, including
those in the sciences. In his1940 study of U.S. science writers, Kreighbaum noted
that most at the time were college graduates, either in the sciences
or with a degree in writing. Only two had majored in the social sciences.
[42]
Lal’s name appeared in Kreighbaum’s list of respondents,
so he was probably one of the two. Yet his lack of formal scientific
training never really became a handicap in his science writing career,
probably due to his natural predisposition toward scientific knowledge. Between 1912 and 1920,
Lal’s activities appeared to be at odds with his latter day image
as a quiet, courteous gentleman journalist. His active involvement
with Indian liberation continued unabated and the period also marked
his first participation in a journalistic venture in the United States,
[43]
working for an ethnic Indian paper in San Francisco
started by Har Dayal, called Gadar
[the Great Rebellion].
[44]
Launched in 1913, the Great
Rebellion was written
in Hindi, and catered to an Indian readership. It had no advertising,
and was “purely secular, political and philosophic … given away free.”
[45]
The paper was financed by farmers and workers of
Indian origin, the Indian “masses” in America, and advocated the cause
of Indian liberation.
[46]
In the oral history interviews, a generally eloquent Lal displayed
uncharacteristic reticence in talking about his life between 1917
and 1920. Interviewer Reiss identified this as a period during which
the quiet but politically active Indian nationalist was arrested and
tried with other U.S. based Indians for their role in anti-British
insurgency activities.
[47]
Though Lal made no mention of it, the subsequent
trial led to a one-year prison sentence in April 1918.
[48]
A more detailed exploration of Lal’s papers might
throw some light on the effect that the trial and imprisonment had
on Lal. Yet, his deliberate omission of this phase from the interviews
indicated that this was a personally traumatic period for a man of
his culture and disposition. It also appeared to mark the end of his
overt anti-British activities in the United States in the cause of
Indian independence. However, Lal never really lost his spirited Indian
nationalism despite this experience, and his gradual acculturation
into the American way of life. In his own words: “My Nationalism is
two-layered: Indian and American…I am a ‘double patriot,’ with no
if or but.”
[49]
In another instance, a newspaper report in the
prestigious Indian daily the Hindu cited the text of a telegram dated
August 30, 1946
[50]
from Lal to Indian prime minister Jawarharlal Nehru,
who had just formed the new transition government: “Congratulations.
Your Premiership guarantees freedom and unity. Americana with you.”
[51]
Subsequently, Lal was honored with two top awards
from the Indian government in recognition of his contribution to the
liberation movement.
[52]
Lal’s Journalism Career The Beginnings Kreighbaum
and others
[53]
pointed out that in these early years of the Popular
Science movement, few journalists entered journalism with the express
purpose of becoming science writers. Some were assigned from general
reporting by editors to write science stories in response to growing
public interest in science,
[54]
others wrote about science due to personal interest.
Lal’s entry into journalism, and later science journalism, appeared
to have been shaped by both accident and interest. While the Great
Rebellion sparked his interest in the field,
[55]
his career in mainstream American journalism took
off only after his release from prison. In 1920, among other things,
Lal was “lecturing in Paul Elder’s gallery in psychology” [in San
Francisco].
[56]
This may have perhaps led to an invitation by the
managing editor of the San Francisco Daily
News to write a story about the “psychology of feet”
[57]
--according to Lal “a kind of half crazy subject.”
[58]
In those days, the media had developed a fascination
for the newly emerging field of applied psychology, and stories such
as “What Makes Us Love as We Do,” “War Prevention – Can Science Help?”
“Criminals Aren’t Family Men” were grist for the media mill.
[59]
Lal was asked to write a piece about “reading character
by [a] woman’s feet” since the editor believed that the Indian was
a psychologist who “read palms.”
[60]
The editor’s motives were commercial.
[61]
The Indian just wanted a job. Despite the lack
of scientific knowledge endemic among reporters – and editors -- of
the period, Lal took a chance and converted the opportunity into an
“anatomical and anthropological/historical story of the importance
of human feet”
[62]
-- a science think piece. This landed him his first
job as a feature writer on the Daily
News staff. Subsequently, he began to specialize in coverage of
San Francisco’s literary Bohemia, well equipped for the task through
his humanistic training, and familiarity with the literary world.
[63]
Six
years later, as a reporter writing similar literary profiles and features
for Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner,
Lal once again changed tracks almost by chance. On assignment at the
Los Angeles motion picture studios, he decided to visit the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena on impulse.
[64]
The chance visit to Cal Tech, a beehive of scientific
activity at the time, led to a freewheeling interview with Dr. Robert
A. Milliken, the renowned scientist who discovered cosmic rays. Subsequently,
Milliken provided Lal with an introduction to the pioneering Mount
Wilson Laboratory astronomers whose ranks included Dr. Edwin P. Hubble.
[65]
The ensuing articles on the new physics and astronomy
brought Lal to the attention of William Randolph Hearst Senior, the
Examiner’s owner. Hearst liked the way the young writer had turned
the obtuse and complicated language of the laboratory into terms the
average reader could understand.
[66]
He created a special post of science editor to
which he assigned Lal,
[67]
making the Examiner
one of the first newspapers on the West Coast to have a specialized
science writer.
[68]
This marked the beginning of Lal’s long association
with the Hearst newspapers, first with the Examiner,
then with the International News Service, and the New York based American Weekly. Lal remained science editor emeritus with the Hearst
newspapers for twenty-five years even after he officially hung up
his boots.
[69]
He wrote his last piece for the Examiner
in 1983, a few weeks before he died at the age of ninety one.
[70]
Views on Science Journalism and
Recurring Themes
Lal thought of himself as a rational humanist. He found no
incongruity in embracing both rationalistic and humanistic ideas of
progress and freedom, considering them both equally important in human
development. He believed four things were important for modern civilized
living: “[w]e need science for the discovery of truth; the creative
arts for the good of our emotions; freedom in which to develop, and,
finally, we need to love and serve our fellows against the common
enemies of man.”
[71]
He also believed that the science writer’s role
was “to create a public taste for science. We must make science accessible
to the people and for the people. Otherwise, it’s dangerous.”
[72]
Lal’s definition of scientific news reflected his belief that
science, if brought to the people, would be a true liberator of humanity.
He considered the popularization of science through media as playing
a crucial role in this. “Science news is the connecting link between
science and democracy.”
[73]
Science news, according to him, had to be “timely,
significant for history
charged with some power capable of safe-guarding and increasing some form of human freedom, and carrying the impress of as trustworthy
personal authority as possible”
[italics in original].
[74]
Lal’s statements were in perfect synchrony with the viewpoints
that prevailed during the development of science journalism in the
mid-twentieth century. The Depression and the World Wars had given
credence to the argument that everyone should understand science because
of the social impact of research coming from the laboratory.
[75]
This concern for social responsibility, combined
with the growing interest in atomics and medicine, shaped the upsurge
of science coverage in the media in the 1950s and early 1960s.
[76]
However, not all of this coverage was accurate, positive and
responsible. Burnham observed that journalists often sensationalized
stories to attract readers;
[77]
Kriegbaum
[78]
pointed out that lack of formal science training
often hindered the accurate reporting of scientific facts and events.
Yet the coverage of science by the handful of professional science
writers was of a relatively high quality at this time.
[79]
In an analysis of science coverage in
magazines between 1910 and 1950,
LaFollette observed that the quality journals presented science to
readers not in isolation but as an integral part of modern life which
affected all social institutions. Writers not only presented the facts
and events, but also addressed their social and political contexts.
[80]
Relationship Between Scientists
and Journalists
The
early years of science journalism in the 20th century were
fraught with mutual suspicion and animosity between scientists and
journalists. Scientists found the media woefully ill equipped to explain
scientific discoveries, and were often wary of the popular science
movement that swept through American media.
[81]
Yet external events like the World Wars and the
Russian launch of Sputnik brought science out of the ivory tower of
research institutions and universities. Funding of science by the
government led to its development on a large scale: this in turn influenced
perceptions of the public’s right to be informed. It was inevitable
that scientists and journalists needed to work together in the public
interest, and scientists gradually began to trust this core group
of professional journalists for their accuracy and understanding of
scientific subjects. Krieghbaum quoted Dr. Paul B. Sears, a president
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: For the vital task of keeping the public informed
of the nature and progress of science we must depend upon a group
of hardworking craftsmen, the professional science writers … schooled
in the hard discipline of journalism. …[t]hey must translate from
the most artificial and involved language man has devised.
[82]
Talking about the symbiotic relationship that developed between
writers and famous scientists, Lal mentioned the friendships that
developed with many of his interviewees.
[83]
Among the probable reasons were his effective reporting,
[84]
grasp of scientific ideas and developments, and
obvious admiration for science itself. Lal himself ascribed his success
in interviewing scientists to the fact that he knew what he was discussing,
and always went well prepared for the interviews. A genuine interest
in, and some knowledge of the area the interviewee was working in,
was important to him. He also believed that his liberal education
provided an important building block for his journalistic activities,
so he could talk to “socialists … anarchists … ultra-radicals … ultra-conservatives
… historians.”
[85]
During
an interview, Lal did not consciously engage in note taking. According
to him “I don’t interview people, I exchange ideas with them. If I
don’t have anything to say, they have nothing to say to me. Because
they’re not really ready for talking to a newspaperman except when
they want publicity for some particular thing they do.”
[86]
On many occasions this resulted in interviews extending
well beyond the allotted time in a mutual exchange of knowledge. This
was true even in Lal’s young and green Examiner
days, when he described his all important Cal Tech meeting with Dr.
Millikan. Given just 15-20 minutes (after taking the night train from
San Francisco to arrive for an eleven o’clock interview the next morning)
because the president of Yale [Dr. Angell] was meeting the scientist
for lunch, Lal recollected, “We sat together, Milliken and I, up to
about six-thirty in the evening. There was no lunch, either for him
or for me.”
[87]
Lal’s awareness of Einstein’s theory, and Milliken’s
explanation of its relationship with the formation of cosmic rays
in space sparked a lively discussion, one that both scientist and
journalist appeared reluctant to terminate.
[88]
Most
scientists trusted Lal, and other professional writers like him, because
they provided accurate representation of their work. Late in his life,
as editor emeritus, Lal still attended conferences, amazing younger
colleagues with his well informed and insightful questions.
[89]
Relationship With Science Writing
Fraternity
Among
the science writers themselves, there was a greater feeling of kinship
whatever their journalistic affiliation. Unlike reporters in other
areas (political reporters for example), many of them cooperated with
each other, some of them eventually forming an “inner circle,” setting
their own high standards for science reporting.
[90]
Lal’s oral history echoes with examples of this
camaraderie and cooperation. He cited the winning of the Pulitzer
as one of the most telling examples of collaborative work.
Reporting on science at the Harvard University Tercentenary in
1936, he (International News Service/Universal News Service), Bill
Lawrence (New York Times), John O’Neill (Herald
Tribune), Howard Blakeslee (Associated Press) and David Dietz
(Scripps Howard), decided to work together for the month-long coverage.
“We figured that we are the ones who served the most papers, and we
decided to stick together.”
[91]
Each morning the five gathered to decide on the
day’s story. Lal considered this collaborative effort the primary
reason for the Pulitzer, but admitted that it did arouse envy among
those outside the circle.
[92]
In
1934, Lal and this core group of writers banded together professionally
to form the National Association of Science Writers, with David Dietz
as president and a membership of twelve. With characteristic modesty,
Lal called Lawrence, Dietz and Robert Potter (of the Science Service)
the driving force behind NASW. The formation of the organization was
based on the reasoning that as an organized group, “it might stabilize
our profession. They wanted status for [their] jobs, security…we thought
we would organize ourselves to win the trust both of the publishers
with whom we had to deal, and the scientists with whom we had to deal.”
[93]
Lal himself served as president of NASW in 1940.
By 1985, the NASW had 61 members, and more than 300 in the 1960s.
[94]
Over the years, NASW won a set of operating amenities
for its members that included official press liaison, pressrooms,
phones, typewriters, copies of papers for study, news conferences,
reference books, and other accommodations to make reporting easier,
thorough, and more accurate.
[95]
The ensuing professionalism, according to Lal,
went a long way toward developing a feeling of mutual trust and respect
between NASW members and scientists.
[96]
Relationship
With Publishers and Editors Lal’s respect for the Hearst family is
evident in a letter he composed (but never mailed) to Hearst Junior
dated April 12, 1982. In the letter, ninety-one-year-old Lal expressed
his admiration for Hearst Senior, describing with remarkable clarity
the reasons that drew him to the newspaper magnate. Crossing over
to the United States on the S.S. Nile from Yokahama, Japan, in 1912,
he recollected encountering “a new kind of magazine,” Hearst’s Cosmopolitan. Subsequently, during his
years at Berkeley, he became acquainted with philanthropist Phoebe
Hearst. In Lal’s own words: I was overcome with a feeling of veneration and admiration.
...She had a global cultural viewpoint. ...Your grandmother’s approval
of me expressed to Dr. Wheeler
[97]
… was like a spring shower to a young man from
India.
[98]
At
the same time, William Randolph Hearst’s signed editorials in the
Examiner, expressing support for the cause
of Indian independence, also sounded like music to the young nationalist’s
ears: What was particularly heart-warming for me was his outright
support for the independence of India. …Who else among the press Magnates
of the United States did anything like this? My gratitude for him
was deep and abiding.
[99]
It
may be possible to conjecture that this deep admiration for Hearst’s
championing of the Indian cause, and Phoebe Hearst’s approbation of
the young Indian student, were partly responsible for Lal seeking
out the editor of a Hearst newspaper (the Examiner),
Edmund Coblenz, for a job in 1925. From the introduction to the oral
history by Hearst Junior, it is evident that his father though highly
of Lal, admiring his work enough to create a special post for him
and “[give] him a long leash and a massive canvas for his stories.
And Lal was not found wanting.”
[100]
Lal shared an equally congenial relationship
with his editors. Coblenz of the Examiner became a life-long friend; Walter Howey, editor of the American Weekly, was another. According
to Lal, Howey was a remarkable man who liked both technology and medical
articles. Lal narrated how Howey was one of those rare editors who
wanted to learn more about new scientific developments. On Howey’s
request, he set up an interview to view the first ever transistor
with the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill. Howey became
one of the first newspaper people to see the device that transformed
communications.
[101]
Journalistic Triumphs
Discussing journalistic fame, Lal said, “ I have no vanity;
I have a lot of pride, but no vanity.”
[102]
He believed that his work spoke for itself, and
his by-line was his only claim to fame. Interestingly enough, Lal
claimed that he never wrote a single article without a by-line, even
in the early Daily News
days.
[103]
Hearst
Junior corroborated both Lal’s personal humility as well as his journalistic
eminence. Lal
gets attention because he is the antithesis of the accepted mold.
…He is almost courtly in his manner of dealing with others. …However
none should be fooled by [his] kindly demeanor. In the pursuit of
a story, he is tenacious and thorough. When on assignment, he is totally
committed to getting the facts.
[104]
As a result, “In
the printed form [Lal’s name] has had tremendous exposure. Over the
last six decades it has appeared as a by-line on thousands of stories
in hundreds of millions of copies of Hearst newspapers and supplements.”
[105]
Generally,
the professional science writers on newspapers appeared to enjoy a
special status not only before the public, but also in the newspaper
offices where they worked. Other staff members deferred to them because
they had access to the latest medical findings. Editors too deferred
to them, giving them greater latitude regarding length and deadlines.
[106]
Even as newsman emeritus, Lal continued to fascinate
the younger reporters on the Examiner
staff because, said Reiss, “[h]e was a newspaperman with such beliefs
and such brilliance, such a fine understanding of complex things,
and yet a humanistic frame of reference.”
[107]
Lal numbered his report of a breakthrough in cancer research
among his finest medical reporting triumphs. In late 1929, Dr. Walter
Coffey, chief surgeon of St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco, initiated
an exclusive interview with Lal, revealing details of a pioneering
biochemical explanation of cancer, “a new theory.”
[108]
Hearst initially killed the dramatic story, due
to be syndicated in all Hearst newspapers on Sunday; on the prior
Thursday Lal got a telegram, “Lal story not to be published. I don’t
want people to get false hopes up.”
[109]
Hearst’s dictum was that nothing on cancer should
be published in any of his newspapers until somebody proved that at
least one thousand cases had been completely cured.
[110]
With quiet temerity and perseverance, Lal launched
a campaign to get the story reinstated, sending letters of support
from the top ten medical scientists and physicians of the region to
Hearst Senior in New York. As a result of the scientific community’s
endorsement, the story was published in the Examiner in 1930, and was syndicated to
all Hearst publications.
[111]
The cancer research story created a storm. “It was like exploding
a bomb.”
[112]
It was reproduced everywhere in the world, also
causing some heartburn among his fellow journalists. Lal mentioned
that one of those disappointed persons was the eminent editor of JAMA,
Maurice Fishbein, who resented the story being scooped in a lay paper.
[113]
Lal’s reward for breaking the story? A salary raise,
a five hundred dollar gift (a princely sum in those days), a story
that caused a world-wide stir, and a transfer to New York.
[114]
Lal recounted two other instances demonstrating
the symbiotic relationship between science and journalism, and how
this relationship could serve the common man. In the first case, a
story on a new invention –the cyclotron –from two young California
scientists, Ernest Orlando Lawrence and J. Robert Oppenheimer, published
by Lal, Howard Blakesle of the Associated
Press, and William Lawrence of the New
York Times in early 1931 had, according to Lal, some effect in
the U.S. government’s making available a powerful magnet that the
scientists needed to carry out their experiments.
[115]
In another instance, Lal recollected an incident
from the late 1940s,
[116]
when a story he wrote on a special treatment for
meningitis, reported the use of a drug called bacitracin by a Chinese
scientist presumably on the Mount Sinai hospital staff. The article
was read by a man near Albany, New York, whose six month old son was
dying of the infection. Despite his doctor’s skepticism about taking
medical advice from newspapers, the man insisted that Lal be contacted.
Lal put them in touch with the Chinese doctor, and the child was cured.
Lal jokingly referred to this incident as “the only thing I can think
of to positively prove that I did some good. …There’s the concrete
proof.”
[117]
Lal’s Style Despite more than seventy years in the United States, Lal’s
language never quite lost the flavor of his native India.
[118]
He inevitably continued to greet visitors and friends
with a soft, courteous “Hello brother.”
[119]
To the end of his life he also retained the encyclopedic
memory and insight that made him a remarkable journalist. The oral
history interviews, conducted in his nineties, are a repository of
startlingly clear recollections, an unmarred ability to process time
periods and people, and Lal’s obvious joy in storytelling. In a speech
to the San Francisco Press Club, August 4, 1981, Lal narrated the
story of how he explained Einstein’s theory of relativity to the eight
year old son of a friend in San Francisco. The simplicity of his explanation,
and the use of illustrations drawn from the child’s point of view,
demonstrated Lal’s ability to express complex ideas with simple eloquence.
[120]
Similarly, the interviews also reveal his grasp
of complex scientific ideas, which he explained to interviewer Reiss
as he would have to his lay readers. Yet, a study of Lal’s journalistic style reveals --in stylistic
terms-- few of the cultural echoes of his Indian upbringing. His routine
coverage of scientific events and discoveries followed traditional
journalistic norms of factual simplicity and clarity.
[121]
More complex ideas, as expressed in his science
magazine articles, Sunday think pieces, and the philosophical essays
of his later years, showed his ability to discourse at a higher level
as well.
[122]
The synthesis of ideas in these essays often blended
Eastern and Western philosophical approaches. Yet nowhere did Lal
lose sight of the fact that he was telling a story, embodying his
belief that copy had to be “lucid, emotional, clear, startling.”
[123]
At the same time it needed to be rational. He believed
statement of purpose gave it the latter, use of language gave it the
former.
[124]
To him the biggest crime was, “ [t]o be dull –
a dull reading is a crime in writing.”
[125]
Burnham listed the basic elements in the popularizing
of science as simplification (omitting complex details),
translation (scientists
thought on a different level from that of ordinary people and a popularizer
had the function of explaining in ordinary, non-technical terms the
ideas in the scientists’ work), and keeping
up (the idea that people should know the general events and findings
from the cutting edge world of science).
[126]
A study of Lal’s writing reveals the dexterous
use of all three elements. In
terms of organization of ideas, Covert
[127]
described the journalists’ pattern of popularizing
as an upwardly tilted spiral. First the writer would start at a low
level with a general idea, explaining fully at the basic level. Later,
he would assume knowledge and allude to it in the course of a more
advanced exposition. Then he would go back to the simple explanation
for those who had not picked it up. The next time he would adopt the more advanced approach. Subsequently,
he would explain less and assume more until the idea gained sufficient
currency, and the scientific word or concept was part of the vocabulary
of ideas of the average reader (eg. germ, missing link, mutation,
fusion etc). Lal appeared to follow these apparent caveats almost
instinctively. It is possible to conjecture that his science writing
style was to some extent modeled on the simple primers on science
that he devoured in childhood.
[128]
Conclusion
Throughout his life and times, Gobind Behari Lal was a man
with a mission. To that extent, it must be said that like most writers
of the time, Lal too had a personal journalistic agenda that colored
his view of science, often obscuring its down side. But, as Lal would
have argued with some eloquence and passion, spreading knowledge about
the constructive use of science was the secret weapon to counter its destructive use in terrifying real world
events of the time. Whether writing seven columns a week for twelve years at the
Examiner,
[129]
weekly think pieces for the American
Weekly or breaking special stories for the Hearst Service, he
marched to the beat of the same drum: “Popularization of science,
to me, is a cause.”
[130]
As an individual, he displayed a characteristically Indian
respect for elders and learned minds, reflected in the unswerving
loyalty with which he served Hearst for sixty years, as well as his
high regard for the scientific minds he encountered and interviewed.
At the same time, as a journalist, he pursued his craft with diligence,
tenacity and purpose, informing and educating people about the importance
of science in their lives.
There were of course several other facets to
both Lal’s personality and his journalism, outside the purview of
this study which is set within the context of his contribution to
science journalism. These form likely subjects for further research.
For example, the interviews provide interesting glimpses into Lal’s
extensive associations with San Francisco’s Bohemians, and his personal
friendships with some of the most glittering literary and artistic
figures of his time, many of whom he interviewed at one point or another.
He also interviewed many of the leading political figures of the day
(Herbert Hoover for example), and also internationally recognized
Indian leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. As a science journalist, Lal traversed the world (at times
at personal expense) in search of stories, seeking out harbingers
of the new rationalism, writing reports, essays, as well as books
on the subjects close to his heart. As a purveyor of ideas, he stayed
rooted in the two cultures that shaped the man he was and the journalist
he became: “A Journalist from India, at Home in the World.”
[131]
Bibliography
[1] Suzanne Reiss, Gobind Behari Lal: A Journalist From India, at Home in the World. Oral History Transcript, CA: Regional Oral History Office, Berkeley, 1983, viii. Reiss was the interviewer for Lal’s oral history, and is the author of the bound transcript of the interviews made available by ROHO. Henceforth, citations from Lal’s interviews will be attributed to the Reiss transcript. [The Bancroft Library citation is as follows: Gobind Behari Lal, “A Journalist from India, At Home in the World,” an oral history conducted in 1981 by Suzanne B. Reiss, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1983]. In her overview of the interviews, Reiss refers to Lal as the “gentle firebrand,” essentially capturing the core of Lal’s personality and career. For more on Lal’s personality, see also Introduction by William Randolph Hearst Junior, Reiss, i, which mentions Lal as both a courtly gentleman and a tenacious reporter. [2] Reiss, 172. Reprint of Lal obituary from San Francisco Examiner, Friday, April 2, 1982. [3] Reiss, 173. Reprint of Lal obituary from California Monthly, June-July 1982. [4] Reiss, 87. [5] The name of the syndicated Hearst news service is slightly confusing. Both Lal and Reiss refer to this as the International News Service (Reiss, 88), but the official Pulitzer citation and several other sources mention the Universal Service. In his fellowship application presented to the Guggenheim foundation, Lal himself mentions both. (Reiss, 145). To clear up the confusion, see Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism, 3rd. edition, New York: Macmillan, 1962, 711. Mott explains that Hearst’s International News Service, which had 300-400 clients in 1914, separated its morning papers to be served by a new agency in 1917, Universal Service. In 1928, INS took the morning papers back, and Universal Service continued to furnish supplemental and special services until it was discontinued in 1937. [6] John C. Burnham, How Superstition Won and Science Lost: Popularizing Science and Health in the United States. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987, 174. [7] Burnham 174 [8] Hillier Krieghbaum. “The Background and Training of Science Writers,” Journalism Quarterly, 17, 1940, 15. A 1939 headcount by Krieghbaum listed just thirty-four professional newspaper science writers. Krieghbaum’s figures are based on the Science Service list issued on June 14, 1939 which contained about 60 names. Krieghbaum eliminated those working on magazines, both popular and scientific, to arrive at his estimate of professional newspaper science journalists. Lal’s name was included in the list.
[9]
See generally Burnham, 1987; Marcel
C. LaFollette. Making Science
Our Own: Public Images of Science, 1910-1955. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1990; Hillier Krieghbaum, Science
and the Mass Media. New York: New York University Press, 1967.
[10] Warren Burkett. News Reporting: Science, Medicine, and High Technology. Ames, IO: Iowa University Press, 1986, 22. Has references to Lal as one of the core group of professional science writers in the 1930s. [11] Sreenath Sreenivasan, “South Asians: The Forgotten Minority,” News Watch Quarterly, 1998, Spring. http://www.sree.net/stories/newswatch.html. While a few Indians immigrants are believe to have arrived in the United States as early as the 19th century, the major wave of Indian immigration began only after 1965, seeking educational and economic opportunities. [12] Reiss, 173. In Appendix J, Lal’s obituary in the California Monthly, June-July 1982 mentions that his friends called him Gobi. This was corroborated through a personal communica |