Joseph Fels Barnes

Joseph Fels Barnes (1907–1970) was an American journalist who was executive director of the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR).

Background Barnes was born in 1907, and graduated from Harvard University in 1927, where he was managing editor and president of the Harvard Crimson. He studied at the London School of Slavonic Studies.

Career

Institute of Pacific Relations Barnes worked on staff in the Soviet Union and China at the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) from 1932 to 1934. He was a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune based in Moscow, Berlin, and New York from 1934 to 1948. That was interrupted by service as director of the Office of War Information overseas branch and Voice of America radio show (1941–1944).

PM / New York Star Barnes was an editor of PM, which he bought from Marshall Field III with Bartley Crum and renamed New York Star. Barnes remained editor until the Star folded in 1949. during the years Shirer worked on the book in the late 1950s, Barnes "offer[ed] helpful criticism at every turn."

Barnes was also for a time a faculty member at Sarah Lawrence College.

Allegations of Communism Often affiliated with left-wing causes, Barnes was accused in the 1950s of being a member of the Communist Party USA by several witnesses. For example, Whittaker Chambers reported on in August 1951:

Personal life and death Around 1935, Barnes married Elizabeth G. Brown of Duluth, Minnesota, former first wife of Frederick Vanderbilt Field.

Legacy Barnes' papers at the Library of Congress contain an unpublished biography of Wendell L. Willkie plus correspondence with Irita Taylor Van Doren, George Bergal, Norman Corwin, Bartley Cavanaugh Crum, William Fitz Gibbon, and J.L. Jones.

Works Behind the Far Eastern Conflict with Frederick V. Field (1933) Empire in the East (1934) (1970) Days and Nights by Konstantin Simonov (1945) Willkie: The Events He was Part of, the Ideas He Fought for (1952) The Story of a Life by Konstantin Paustovsky (1964) Fierce and Beautiful World: Stories by Andrei Platonov (1970)