As Columnist Departs, Little Warmth From the Sun

Germond, who retired in 2000, had long overshadowed his partner because of his prominence on television, including a 15-year stint on "The McLaughlin Group." But the indefatigable Witcover has also won plaudits as a reporter and as the author of 10 books, including a forthcoming memoir, "The Making of an Ink-Stained Wretch."

Witcover's problems began last summer, months after a new publisher brought in by the parent Tribune Co. fired the Sun's editor, William Marimow, over what was described as a personality clash. When Franklin, who had been editor of another Tribune paper, the Orlando Sentinel, succeeded Marimow, he asked Witcover to take a voluntary buyout under a program being offered to reduce the newspaper's staff. (Seventeen employees took the buyout; the newsroom staff is now 360.)

Franklin and Donovan told him that if he did not take the buyout, his thrice-weekly column would be cut back to once a week, Witcover recalled.

He said they did not criticize his work, saying only that the op-ed page was being revamped. Witcover says he was also told that, like other Sun employees, he would lose medical benefits once he retired if he did not take the buyout.

Witcover said he reluctantly agreed when the Sun, "as a sop," gave him a one-year contract to run his column three times a week for the rest of the presidential campaign and once a week afterward. Under that arrangement, he was paid less than a third of his previous salary.

Earlier this year Donovan was using the column twice a week instead of once, but halted publication in February, when Witcover had exhausted the money allotted under the contract. The Sun worked out an extension by converting a remaining $8,000 in travel money to salary.

"It benched me," he said. "I didn't go out and do anything. For the rest of the year I wrote from Washington. They didn't seem to care." Then came the termination letter.

Witcover's departure comes as many Sun staffers are worried about further budget cutbacks by Tribune executives. The Washington bureau, which once employed 15 journalists, has shrunk from 10 to seven since Franklin took over. The operation is slated this fall to move into a building with seven other Tribune Co. bureaus, including those of the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Newsday--a move described by the parent corporation as aimed at minimizing duplication.

Franklin said he would use more copy from the other papers and has revamped the bureau by creating such beats as national security and medical news. "We want to produce more enterprise and break more news out of Washington," he said.

Witcover, whose first full-time journalism job was as a night copy editor on the sports desk of the Providence Journal, arrived in Washington for Newhouse Newspapers in 1954 to cover the first term of President Dwight Eisenhower. He was steps away from where Robert Kennedy was shot in 1968 and one of the reporters featured in the 1972 campaign book "The Boys on the Bus." Witcover did stints with the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post during that decade before joining Germond at the Washington Star in 1977. They moved their column to the Sun when the Star folded in 1981.

Asked why he isn't taking this opportunity to retire, Witcover said: "I like to write. It comes as second nature to me."