Last summer James Wolcott reviewed The Complete New Yorker on DVD for The New Criterion. He concluded with a list of “future topics for inquiry.” Number one with a bullet point was this: “Why does A.J. Liebling remain a vibrant role model for writers while the superb, prolific St. Clair McKelway has been sorely forgotten?” Liebling’s continued popularity is not my subject here, though I will direct your attention to his description of a New York City boxing cornerman’s “satellite, a man who went by the name of Mr. Emmet. Mr. Emmet, a Bostonian, is so called because, as he explains, ‘I always hanged in Emmet Street.’ He has forgotten his former name, which was polysyllabic.” In my opinion, the creator of that last sentence deserves to be a role model for writers as long as there are writers.

To the McKelway part of the question, I say: Why indeed?

McKelway was a North Carolinian with journalism in his bloodlines: his great uncle, whose name he shared, had been editor of the Brooklyn Eagle; the family moved to Washington, D.C., and his brother Ben was to become editor of The Washington Star. Starting out as an office boy on the Washington Times-Herald, McKelway went on to the New York World, the New York Herald Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, and the Bangkok Daily Mail — relocating to Siam for four years being a characteristically unpredictable McKelway move. He came to The New Yorker in 1933, at the age of twenty-eight, just as the magazine was becoming a magnet for the best urban journalists from all the New York dailies. In a span of just a few years, the New Yorker’s founding editor, Harold Ross, recruited at least one reporter who continues to be a vibrant role model — Joseph Mitchell...

Complete access to this article will soon be available for purchase. Subscribers will be able to access this article, and the rest of CJR’s magazine archive, for free. Select articles from the last 6 months will remain free for all visitors to CJR.org.