Historian Howard Zinn, in Discovering John Reed, contrasted the evolution of Reed and Lippmann during World War 1, where Reed moved left and Lippmann moved right:
The big periodicals of New York pressed him to cover the European war for them, and he agreed to go for the Metropolitan. At the same time he wrote an article for the Masses It was a war for profit, he said. On the way to Europe, he was conscious of the rich on the first-class decks, and three thousand Italians kept like animals in the hold. He was soon in England, in Switzerland and Germany, and then, in France, walking through the fields of war: rain, mud, corpses. What depressed him most was the murderous patriotism seizing everyone on both sides, even some Socialists, like H.G. Wells in England.
When he returned to the States after four months, he found the radicals Upton Sinclair and John Dewey among the patriots. And Walter Lippmann too. Lippmann, now editor of the New Republic, wrote in December, 1914 a curious essay: “The Legendary John Reed.” It defined the distance between himself and Reed. “By temperament he is not a professional writer or reporter. He is a person who enjoys himself.” And then Lippmann, who clearly had pride in himself as “a professional writer,” gave the ultimate dismissal: “Reed has no detachment and is proud of it.”