18/09/2022
Irving L. "Bud" Mansell held the title of managing editor longer than anyone in the history of the Vindicator. Here is his story.
***
Irving L. "Bud" Mansell
Vindicator Editorial Staff 1929-1976
General Assignment Reporter, Police Reporter, City Hall Reporter, Courthouse Reporter, Rewriteman, Financial Editor, Telegraph Editor, Makeup Editor, Assistant City Editor, Managing Editor
Ask people what kind of managing editor Irving L. “Bud” Mansell was and the answer depends on who you talk to.
One former reporter and editor says Mansell was a “namby pamby,” afraid of rocking the boat and reporting the real news.
No, he was a community minded journalist with an appropriate strategy for growing the newspaper’s circulation footprint, says another reporter.
A third editor says Mansell was in many ways simply typical of the generation of editors who began their Vindicator careers during the Great Depression and served their country in World War II.
One thing is for sure.
The person who mattered the most, Vindicator Editor and Publisher William F. Maag Jr., obviously thought highly of Mansell.
On Oct. 30, 1949, Maag elevated Mansell from assistant city editor to managing editor, succeeding then-managing editor William L. Powers, who left to study law.
In the process, Mansell leap-frogged his bosses, city editor Frank Wise and assistant managing editor George Kelley, an unprecedented promotion in Vindicator history before or after.
It was a job he would hold until 1976. Nobody ever held the title of managing editor at the Vindicator longer than Bud Mansell.
***
Irving Lawsen Mansell was born June 4, 1908, in McKeesport, Pa., a son of Irving Van Voorhis Mansell and Cordelia Wheeler Smith Mansell.
His father was a pipe inspector at U.S. Steel’s National Plant in McKeesport. His mother was a housewife.
His birth certificate initially identified him as John Lawsen Mansell, but the name “John” was scratched out and replaced by “Irving.”
At age five, Mansell’s family moved to Toronto, where he attended grade school. He returned to the United States to complete high school in New Wilmington, Pa., and Bridgeport, Conn.
A year after graduating from high school, he began attending Westminster College, a small, private, liberal arts college in New Wilmington.
At Westminster, Mansell majored in English and history and received a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts.
Along the way, he served as a reporter, associate editor, sports columnist, and editor in chief of the student newspaper, a weekly called The Holcad. He also was sports editor of the Argo yearbook. He introduced the nickname “Towering Titans” to the Westminster basketball team.
While at Westminster, Mansell played class football, inter-fraternity basketball and varsity tennis. He was a member of the Phi Pi Phi fraternity.
Mansell’s relationship with Westminster was deep and long.
His wife, the former Lucille McConaghy, had a degree from Westminster and was assistant director of admissions at Westminster. Their son, Dr. John L. Mansell, was a 1954 graduate of the college. Their daughter, Jane, also attended Westminster.
Mansell headed up numerous fundraising efforts for Westminster, served as president of its alumni association and, in 1954, received an honorary doctorate from the school. He was a member of the board of trustees from 1959 to 1979.
***
Mansell joined the Vindicator just out of college, beginning as a general assignment reporter in September 1929. A month later, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, the stock market crashed, precipitating the Great Depression.
Mansell spent 20 years learning the ropes and serving in many reporting and editing roles, beginning as a general assignment reporter. Then he moved to the police beat, where he wrote a column called “In Jail and Out.” Then he was off to cover City Hall. He then served as courthouse reporter. And then rewriteman, financial editor, telegraph (wire) editor, and makeup editor.
As telegraph editor in 1940, he wrote an article predicting a speedy defeat for Germany.
The article was prefaced by this editor’s note:
“For a full year the correspondents and special writers of the world’s three greatest news gathering agencies have given Vindicator readers late flashes and measured predictions on the war in Europe. The Vindicator telegraph editor, through whose hands most of this material has passed, now passes on his own opinion for whatever you may think it to be worth.”
The story began:
“Germany will be licked!
“It may happen in 1941 or perhaps later, but whatever the time, the trend of news dispatches and commentaries on the European war today indicate Germany will suffer defeat and lose as much as a third of her pre-war territory.”
The timing of his optimistic prediction was off by a few years.
***
By April 1942, Mansell was, in addition to his editorial job, serving as a senior air raid warden with responsibility over several other air raid wardens in Boardman Township.
Mansell convened a planning session of his wardens, which drew a glowing article from the Vindicator.
The article, authored by Fred Friedman, carried the headline, “No Quibbling or Shirking; Men Get Set for Raid Job.”
Friedman wrote, in part, “I came away from I.L. ‘Bud’ Mansell’s home in Afton Ave. feeling just a little sorry for the N***s and J**s.
“The N***s have got Americans figured all wrong. They don’t stand a chance fighting the kind of spirit I saw exemplified in the organization of the air raid protection for two square miles of Boardman Township.
“When the bombs will begin falling, or if they will fall, didn’t mean much to Mansell and his group of prospective air raid wardens, charged with protecting Precinct 5.
“All that mattered was that there was responsibility to shoulder. The only issue was how.
“One of the men in Mansell’s territory was disturbed because he is working 10 hours a day on a vital job, leaving only 14 hours in which he can do air raid duty.
“This is indicative of the general attitude toward the task of protecting civilian life, limb and property. Mansell thought the men ought to vote on second, third and fourth head wardens. The men thought he ought to name them. Voting was just a waste of time; there was a job to be done, and feelings and personalities couldn’t enter into such a serious matter.
“What occurred at Mansell’s house will occur many times here and elsewhere in the nation as sectors are organized.
“Many times again men will gather in the chief warden’s living room and calmly discuss plans for protecting the neighborhood. When the chief warden says, ‘Joe, you’ll have charge of such and such a street between such and such a street,’ Joe will reply, ‘Swell,” or ‘that’s ok by me’.
“There won’t be any hemming or hawing. Joe won’t drawl that he wanted to handle such and such a street. When the safety of women and children is considered, American men don’t become fussy. They become tougher, and the tougher the job the better they like it.
“Yes sir, I had heard a lot about American spirit. I saw it. In fact, I shook hands with it.
“’What was the name?’ I asked after Bud had introduced me to one man.
“’Oh yes,’ I added after the man had repeated it. It was a long, difficult name, rooted in Europe. But the man was all American!
“One of the men at Mansell’s split an infinitive and threw a verb out of place occasionally. But he had a little button in his lapel which showed he had fought for his country in 1917-1918. The enemies of decency had Americans all wrong then too.”
In June 1942, Mansell was elected chief air raid warden for Boardman Township overall.
By August 1944, Mansell was commissioned in the Navy and served as a gunnery officer aboard cargo vessels in the Atlantic and Pacific until his discharge in March 1946.
Upon his return, he was promoted to assistant city editor.
***
In the Vindicator’s 1949 announcement of the appointment of Bud Mansell as managing editor, the newspaper made note of the many beats Mansell had covered as a reporter, including City Hall, where he “formed a fast friendship with Congressman Michael J. Kirwan, who was then beginning his political career as a city councilman.”
This was not an overstatement.
In October 1946, the month before the general election, Mansell, by then assistant city editor, wrote a four-part profile of Kirwan that was the equivalent of an extended political endorsement presented as news.
The headlines and subheads tell the tone of the stories.
Oct. 14, 1946
“Kirwan’s Fearless Stands Molded Bright Record During Crises”
… “Mike Voted Right to Gird Nation and Defy Hysteria”
… “Showed Courage in Voting for Guam Defense, Lifting of Arms Embargo; Wields Great Power”
Oct. 15, 1946
“Kirwan Fought for Strong U.S. While Aiding District”
… “Voted for Draft, Neutrality Repeal, Gained Millions in Useful Projects; Pal of Fighting Men”
Oct. 16, 1946
“Kirwan Wins U.S. Acclaim With ‘Perfect War Record’”
… “Honored at Home and Throughout Nation; Meander, Berlin Projects Lauded; Labor Adds Support”
Oct. 17, 1946
“Hard-Working Kirwan Sets Sights for Postwar Gains”
… “Fights for Housing for Vets, Strong Hand in World Affairs and Works Overtime to Get Canal”
The Vindicator’s central argument for Kirwan, as delivered by Mansell in the inaugural article, was this:
“Let’s look at our congressman’s position in the next session.
“He sits on the appropriations committee, the most powerful in Congress. He will continue in this highly important position, which gives him a voice on all appropriations including any that may be authorized for waterways. Such a key position would not be obtained by a freshman congressman.
“However, Congressman Kirwan adds to that post another that immeasurably strengthens his voice on appropriations. He will be chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on the interior. This group handles first the outlay for everything within the United States and its territories.
“Further he is a member of the subcommittee on military and civil functions. This group not only handles funds for maintenance of the army but also for civil functions carried on by the board of army engineers. Of vital importance to Youngstown, these functions include appropriations for dams, reservoirs, harbors and rivers.”
Along with the Chamber and other groups, the Vindicator had lobbied tirelessly for many years to convince the U.S. government to build the Lake Erie-Ohio River Canal with passage through Youngstown via the Mahoning River.
They clearly saw Kirwan as a crucial key to potential success.
Mansell’s report included no interview with Kirwan, no quotes from anyone – friend or foe – and no mention of his opponent. It was a straight Mansell narrative for four days.
To be fair, this was far from the first time the Vindicator was highly engaged politically. William F. Maag Sr. served a term in the Ohio General Assembly. And, Politics Editor Clingan Jackson served as a member of the Ohio House of Representatives (1934-1936), a member of the Ohio Senate (1944-1950) and as a candidate for governor (1958) – all while continuing in his role at the newspaper.
The midterm elections of 1946 were seen as a referendum on President Harry Truman, whose approval rating had sunk to 32 percent. While Democrats lost control of the House (for two years), Kirwan, first elected in 1936, won re-election with 60 percent of the vote.
Kirwan enjoyed the Vindicator’s support throughout his time in office, which continued until his death in Washington, D.C., in 1970 at age 83.
***
Three years into the job as assistant city editor, on the eve of his 20th anniversary with the newspaper, Mansell burnished his credentials as a go-getter during a raid at the notorious Jungle Inn, a gambling roadhouse just outside the city limits in Liberty Township.
On Aug. 13, 1949, the Vindicator featured a double-stacked, all-caps banner headline on top of page one blaring, “JUNGLE THUGS RESIST RAID; FARAH ORDERS CHIEF SHOT” with successive subheads, “Yells ‘Kill Him’ to Trigger Man,” “Hirelings Keep Liquor Agents Prisoner; Block Slot Seizure with Help of Sheriff.”
The essence of the story was that 20 state liquor agents raided the Jungle Inn. The mobsters running the joint threatened to kill them and essentially held them inside until the Trumbull County Sheriff showed up. He, in turn, refused to let the state seize gambling devices, saying he wasn’t sure of his authority and wanted to consult a prosecutor.
Meanwhile, outside the Jungle Inn, mobsters set up a perimeter and refused to let anyone in the Jungle Inn. This included, notably, three “Vindicator men.”
A front-page sidebar captured the story. Its headline read: “3 Vindicator Men Periled by Hoodlums” with a subhead, “Jungle Inn Hirelings Damage Camera, Push Reporters Around.”
“Hired hoodlums of Jungle Inn, in an ugly mood after a state raid Friday night, menaced three Vindicator men and attempted to smash a photographer’s camera,” the story reported.
“Only a snarled, ‘No rough stuff,’ from a gangster boss, who was standing near-by, apparently prevented the hoodlums from going further than damaging the camera and stealing a reflector and several film holders.
“The gangsters prevented the reporters from entering the joint to question state men who were searching for liquor.
“This morning, the hoodlums got support from Sheriff Ralph R. Milliken of Trumbull County. The newsmen, still blocked out after daybreak, sent a new request in to the law officers for help in getting past the barricade. When it got to Milliken, he is reported to have said, ‘We don’t want any Vindicator men in here’.
“The three Vindicator men involved were Edward Shuba, staff photographer; Adrian Slifka, reporter; and Irving L. Mansell, acting city editor. [Mansell was apparently temporarily filling in for City Editor Frank Wise.]”
The “Vindicator men” were recognized by the newspaper’s editorial page three days later in an editorial entitled “Gallantry and Courage.”
“State liquor enforcement chief Anthony J. Rutkowski found the raid on Jungle Inn so dangerous that he asked newspapers in his home town of Cleveland to give special recognition to the ‘gallantry and courage’ of the men who accompanied him.
“Such recognition was well earned, for during their long ordeal the raiders never knew whether they would ever come out alive,” the editorial observed.
“While citations are being given for courage and gallantry, the members of [the Vindicator] staff who ran equal risks deserve recognition. Not in many years have any Youngstown newspapermen found their lives in such jeopardy and probably none have ever been more roughly treated.
“Staff photographers Lloyd Jones and Edward Shuba, Adrian Slifka of the Vindicator’s reportorial staff, and acting city editor Irving Mansell, who had to fight Jungle Inn’s angry hoodlums to get the story of the raid and the gangsters’ defiance, earned the gratitude of the community for their self-sacrificing devotion to duty. They lived up to the best traditions of newspapermen who, when they are given an assignment, perform it with soldierly fidelity.”
A few weeks later, on Oct. 30, 1949, Irving L. “Bud” Mansell was named managing editor of the Vindicator when William L. Powers left the job to study law.
***
In his first few days, Mansell found the job hectic.
In a letter to Catesby Cannon, who had left the newspaper to serve in World War II and was preparing to return to work at the newspaper in the coming months, Mansell gave initial impressions while discussing Catesby’s future role.
“This, as so often has been said, is a mad house,” Mansell wrote. “Chief current reason is the election and attendant irritations plus a near fistic encounter between [photographers Ed] Grass and [Lloyd] Jones. It has me down to the extent of not having time to write you a proper letter. I am pleased that you plan to be back with us on Jan. 5. My plan now is to put you at your old stand, temporarily at least. After you catch hold again we can go on from there. Perhaps we can talk it over when you have shed the Navy blue. Thanks for the good letter and I hope to be out of the woods enough to type a better response after the shouting and the tumult dies.”
Cannon was subsequently named assistant city editor, succeeding Mansell in that role.
Things had calmed down enough by 1950 for Mansell to respond to written questions posed to newspaper executives participating in the Associated Press Managing Editors Association meeting in Atlanta.
Asked what was driving lower morals in society, Mansell asserted, “drinking among high schoolers, profanity in grades.”
Asked what story he would most like to write, he responded, “The millennium is here.”
***
In the here and now, racketeering in Youngstown continued to be a focus for Managing Editor Mansell.
In 1952, he would be found urging citizens to stay focused on racketeering to defend gains against gangsters.
“The good citizens of Youngstown should be as smart as the racketeers. We should begin now thinking about next summer’s mayoral campaign. If the good people wait it will be too late,” he said. “I think I know what’s going on among the thugs, racketeers and gamblers who are still around. They’re getting ready to work their way back into town right now.”
He also took the opportunity to laud his boss, Editor and Publisher William F. Maag Jr.
“Newspapers are like people. They have character where there is mutual respect and cooperation. They have one man at the top, the publisher. The Vindicator has had character from the outset, the character of the men who have been its publishers. [The newspaper] has not only doubled in size in the last 20 years, but the Sunday edition now goes to more than four times as many readers. It has done this because it has character and it gets character from its publisher.”
In 1961, while attending the Associated Press Managing Editors convention in Dallas, Mansell queried the guest speaker, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, as to whether the federal government was sufficiently focused and coordinated on investigating crime in Youngstown.
The subsequent story was headlined, “Bob Kennedy Pledges Continued Probe Here.”
“The Department of Justice is continuing its investigation of gambling and ‘corruption of public officials’ in Youngstown, Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy said Wednesday. He called the situation ‘extremely serious.’
“Kennedy was asked about gambling and corruption in Youngstown by Irving L. Mansell of The Youngstown Vindicator ….”
“We are well aware of the ‘serious’ situation in Youngstown, Kennedy replied.”
For his part, Kennedy’s talk had urged newspaper editors to “turn reporters loose to dig out Communist activities on a local level,” saying it would help keep the Communist party from becoming stronger in the United States.
“’I challenge you to send your reporters out to dig into the activities of the Communist party in your areas and learn the facts,’ he said.”
***
By 1970, some of Mansell’s younger staff were growing disaffected with his newsroom leadership. Bill Thomas, a Niles-based reporter and later Trumbull County editor, was among those.
“Mansell was a nice guy but he was a namby pamby. He had no interest in digging deep and going for the jugular,” Thomas recalls, saying that when it came to underworld crime, for example, “he covered the bombings but that was it.”
Thomas argued that the newspaper had historically had “drive and vigor” but “fell into morbidity” during Mansell’s long tenure.
By 1970, longtime Editor and Publisher William F. Maag Jr. was dead, succeeded by his nephew William Brown.
On May 4, 1970, the schism between Mansell and the “Young Turks” on his staff turned into a chasm.
At 12:24 p.m., over a period of 13 seconds, 28 National Guardsmen fired 67 rounds into a crowd of student protestors and bystanders on the campus of Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others.
The tragedy happened less than an hour away from the Vindicator headquarters but Bud Mansell refused to send reporters to cover the story.
“All of us young guys wanted to cover it, but Mansell wasn’t excited,” Thomas recalls. “We were beside ourselves.”
***
In September 1970, the differences in Mansell’s point of view were on full display.
President Nixon scheduled a large-scale media briefing in Chicago on his evolving foreign policy. He invited many newspapers from across the country that wouldn’t traditionally be invited to such a briefing, including the Vindicator.
Following the briefing, Nixon spent several hours standing in a receiving line greeting all of the attendees one-on-one.
Mansell attended and dutifully reported on the foreign policy points.
He also wrote a somewhat breathless story about the experience of covering a president.
When it was Mansell’s turn to meet the president, he asked whether Nixon remembered longtime Youngstown congressman Mike Kirwan, who had died that year.
“I explained that in my conversations with Mike that he had always spoken highly of Nixon, even though Mike himself was a Democrat.
“The President then related how he had visited Mike in the hospital shortly before his death and how Mike had given him a cheering word. He talked some more about Mike’s character and then shook hands again as I stepped down from the platform.
“Except for the more serious foreign policy information we have covered on Page A-5, that should have ended this episode. I had shaken hands with the President, I had something to tell my grandchildren.
“But the next day the newswire brought a piece from Mike Royko of The Chicago Daily News. Royko had been there, too. He had shaken hands and spent five minutes discussing the movie “Patton.” He wrote an interesting column and remarked:
“He’s in the most important job in the world, with immense and constant pressures, and he spent two hours giving us the glad hand.
“Then Royko suggested the President did all this so ‘we were all to go away thinking more highly of his foreign policies.’ He furthered criticized the briefing, concluding: ‘I think he ought to forget about selling and just demonstrate that the product works’.”
Mansell responded, “So he would debunk the President and the man; just a politician using a gimmick to gain popularity.
“I don’t think so. I don’t think a man with all the world knowledge he has is using it just to advance himself. I think he sees a need; a need for character, stamina, wisdom. Rather than considering virtue corny, I think press, radio and TV should join with the President in looking for more ways of improving communications to ever and ever larger segments of the population.”
Early on the morning of June 17, 1972, five men broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel and office complex in Washington, D.C., in what would prove to be the beginning of the end of the presidency of Richard Nixon.
Bill Thomas recalls, “Mansell wasn’t excited about Watergate. He didn’t like it. Ran it on the inside pages at first. Didn’t think it was important.”
***
Not everyone shared Bill Thomas’s view of Bud Mansell.
Emily Webster Love, who was a Warren reporter who frequently wrote features, saw it differently.
Early in her career, she remembers Mansell telling her that the newspaper had made a lot of enemies in Trumbull County.
In order to grow the newspaper, Mansell told her, “We want our friends back. We want friends in Trumbull County.”
She saw the wisdom in his plan for growth.
“I did really well in Trumbull” by taking his words to heart, she recalls.
She defends the “old timers” like George Reiss and Clingan Jackson, who were increasingly mocked by the Young Turks on the paper.
“They were always doing their job. They were just doing it as gentlemen. They never missed a big story,” Love says, while acknowledging the “energy, the intelligence, the fire in the belly” that the younger reporters were bringing to the job.
Dennis Mangan, a Trumbull County reporter who later served as Trumbull editor, city editor and editorial page editor over a long career with the newspaper, approaches the subject with tact.
Unlike some of the Young Turks, including Mangan himself, Mansell was not someone who would be heard lighting up the newsroom with profanities.
Like his editorial peers, Mansell was a product of the Great Depression and World War II, Mangan suggests.
***
Irving L. “Bud” Mansell retired as managing editor of the Vindicator at the end of July 1976. He was succeeded by Anastasia N. Przelomski, the first woman to serve in that role at the Vindicator.
Upon his retirement, he commented, “I don’t think there is any pursuit more honorable than journalism, any job more suited to service to the public.”
Mansell, 75, died of Parkinson’s Disease at 12:30 a.m. July 26, 1983.
***
“Germany Will Be Licked!” Sept. 15, 1940
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=8qZJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=BYUMAAAAIBAJ&pg=5480%2C4308924
“No Quibbling or Shirking; Men Get Set for Raid Job” April 5,1942
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=9d5eAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jlMNAAAAIBAJ&pg=5547%2C1276303
“3 Vindicator Men Periled by Hoodlums” Aug. 13, 1949
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=uxZJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=kIMMAAAAIBAJ&pg=4130%2C2416783
Mansell Appointed Managing Editor, Oct. 30, 1949
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=9KNJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=S4QMAAAAIBAJ&pg=1939%2C5987982
“Vindicator Visits President” Sept. 20, 1970
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=IRZJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=R4MMAAAAIBAJ&pg=5182%2C1226533
Obituary
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=9-pIAAAAIBAJ&sjid=t4IMAAAAIBAJ&pg=5795%2C3670834
