He spends his free time tending his tomato garden on Martha's Vineyard. In this era of e-mail, he bangs out his column on a typewriter. His friends praise his delicious plum jelly.

But don't mistake J. Anthony Lewis '48 for old-fashioned or out-of-touch. For half a century, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times has been an innovator in his field, a leader among journalists and politicians alike. He remains an unabashed liberal at a time when most in public life shun the label.

"He has a passion for his issues that has been unabated for 30 years," says Linda J. Greenhouse '68, a former Crimson editor and a Times reporter who today covers the Supreme Court beat that Lewis helped originate.

Lewis' commitment to reporting began at Harvard, where he served as managing editor of The Crimson in 1947. The newspaper quickly occupied much of his time.

"If you look at his grades as an undergraduate, they were probably pretty lousy because he spent all his time at The Crimson," recalls Stanley Karnow '45, an author and journalist who became a lifelong friend of Lewis' while serving on the paper.

Working on The Crimson helped shape his life's goals, Lewis says.

"It made it clear to me that what I wanted to do with my life was be a newspaperman," he says.

Lewis enjoyed the social aspect of the newspaper as much as the journalism.

"The most fun I had was putting out a fake issue of the Daily Dartmouth" before a crucial football game, he says.

"We had a page-one editorial denouncing this dastardly scheme to harm the Dartmouth football team," Lewis remembers with a laugh.

During the summer, Lewis worked as a copy-boy at the Times, and after graduation he took a full-time job there. Except for a brief stint at the Washington Daily News from 1952 to 1955, where he distinguished himself reporting on the Navy's Loyalty Security Program, Lewis has worked for the Times all his life.

But his time at the Daily News was significant despite its brevity. His coverage of the loyalty program helped reinstate a sailor accused of treason and won him his first Pulitzer.

"Covering the Red Scare period was an important moment in my life," Lewis says. "It was a rare example of a newspaper article doing good."

In 1956, he returned to Harvard for two years as a Nieman Fellow. Lewis studied and taught classes at the Harvard Law School (HLS).

"He could have been an excellent lawyer," says James Vorenberg '49, former dean of the law school and a friend of Lewis.' "He is an excellent lawyer, without all the training."