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JAMES WECHSLER, A COLUMNIST AND EX-EDITOR OF POST, DIES [1]
['Wolfgang Saxon']
Date: 1983-09-12
James Arthur Wechsler was born Oct. 31, 1915. He was not quite 16 years old when he entered Columbia College in 1931 and graduated with the class of 1935. While in college, he became editor of The Spectator, the student newspaper. For a time after graduation, he edited the Student Advocate, the publication of the American Students Union, a prewar left-wing youth organization. By 1937, Mr. Wechsler had cut his ties with the Communist movement and joined the Nation magazine as an assistant editor. Three years later, he became the assistant labor editor of the now-defunct daily PM and worked his way up to the position of national affairs editor and chief of its Washington bureau.
Mr. Wechsler quit the paper in 1947, protesting that it had fallen under the dominance of Communists, and was hired by Mrs. Schiff to edit The Post. Voiced Conscience of Journalist
Mr. Wechsler's idea of the proper role for journalists like himself was spelled out in one of his early Post editorials.
''It was said long ago,'' he wrote, ''that the function of a newspaper is to 'comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.' Too many newspapers have forgotten the words or grown so fat and comfortable themselves that they view the phrase as inflammatory. We like it and we propose to remember it, not because we regard success as subversive but because success too often means the complacent loss of conscience.''
Mr. Wechsler was the author of several books, starting with ''Revolt on the Campus'' in 1935. His liberal views were forcefully outlined in his ''Reflections of an Angry Middle-Aged Editor'' in 1960. He also wrote a biography of John L. Lewis entitled ''Labor Baron'' in 1944.
With his wife and daughter, he wrote ''In a Darkness'' in 1972, an attempt to fathom the death of his son, Michael, at the age of 26. Michael had had a history of mental disease and had died of an overdose of barbiturates three years earlier.
Mr. Wechsler is survived by his wife, the former Nancy Fraenkel, whom he met at an anti-Nazi rally. They were married when both were still in their teens.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/12/obituaries/james-wechsler-a-columnist-and-ex-editor-of-post-dies.html
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