Riesman Defends Michigan Editors

In a letter to the editor of the Michigan Daily, David Riesman '31 has criticized the paper's administrative Board for shuffling the Daily's newly-appointed senior staff. Because of the board's action several members of the staff immediately resigned in protest.

Riesman's letter insisted that "interference, heavy-handed or subtle, from adults who are put in a position of buffers between the Daily and its critics is not a way to encourage free enterprise at Michigan or anywhere else, and the long-run dangers of such interference would seem to outweigh whatever short-run alleviations it might bring."

A frequent reader of the Michigan University paper and a former CRIMSON editor, Riesman conceded that he was "not unaware of all the ambiguities, misunderstandings, and messes that can cloud the relation of a student newspaper to its various constituencies inside and outside the university."

But he stated, "The residents of the Ann Arbor community are not ill served by the Daily," and dismissed the charge that the paper has been too political. What "news" the paper doesn't cover, Riesman added, is generally run to overflowing by the Detroit papers, by the mass circulation weeklies, and by broadcasting.