COLUMNISTS

Inside Information.

Syndicated in up to two hundred newspapers by the New York Herald Tribune from 1946 to 1958, Joseph Alsop and his brother Stewart were two of the most influential newspaper columnists of the 1950s. Earning sixty thousand dollars for their column and espousing a hard line against the Soviet Union and communism, the Alsops used their contacts within official Washington, D.C., to report inside information on world affairs. The Alsops' column, "Matter of Fact," which appeared four times a week, provided, as Edgar Kemler in the Nation commented in 1954, the "only remaining pipelines into the National Security Council."

Impending Doom.

Their column first appeared on 1 January 1946, the first in a long litany that predicted impending doom for the United States and the world. The Alsopian habit of making dire predictions garnered them many nicknames, including "the...