THE MAN WHO BUILT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL PAGE: Warren Phillips kept it a voice of conservative reason even as other papers were tilting left.

Warren H. Phillips, one of the three or four greatest figures in the 129-year history of The Wall Street Journal, died last Friday at age 92. He was a giant of American journalism, as his obituaries attest. But he also played a mighty role, largely unheralded, in the promotion of a particular brand of responsible, thoughtful, and lively conservatism.

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After a Dow Jones board member complained about the paper’s “right-wing” views, Kilgore wrote to him: “The country has many newspapers and magazines expounding the liberal point of view. What it doesn’t need is a publication that hews to the middle of the road, writing ‘on the one hand’ this and ‘on the other hand’ that. It needs a publication that can articulate, with force and eloquence and in well-reasoned fashion, the conservative position and philosophy on issues before the country.”

That’s what the Journal did throughout the 20th century and still does. But it’s interesting to note that, during this time, many newspapers and magazines with conservative traditions were abandoning their ideological moorings and joining the liberal pack. Robert McCormick’s Chicago Tribune, once a feisty voice of Midwest conservatism, transformed itself into something barely distinguishable from The New York Times. During the 1960s, when the Los Angeles Times embarked on its program to turn itself into a high-quality paper (wonderfully accomplished by Otis Chandler), it also abandoned its traditional conservatism and embraced a kind of rote liberalism.

But the Journal remained true to its heritage, in large measure because of the devotion and fortitude of Warren Phillips and a few others.

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