Sharing the Progress

Eugene Meyer, the high-domed, pince-nez-wearing publisher of the Washington Post, the Capital's sole big-league newspaper, last week announced a plan to share with his employes not the profits--which are nonexistent--but the "progress" of his paper. What was more, Publisher Meyer meant dollars and cents.

The plan: two-thirds of any improvement over last year's financial results will be paid the Post's 600-odd employes. One-half the bonus, if any, will be distributed on a per capita basis, the other half on a percentage basis figured from current salaries. Nothing eleemosynary about the plan, it was officially explained, merely a straight business proposition to bring up revenue, eliminate waste.

The Post is rumored to have lost $300,000 last year, but during the past eight it has steadily siphoned red ink from its ledgers. On that basis, if the loss is $200,000 at this year's end, out of the cornucopia in Publisher Meyer's jeans will shower $66,666.66--of which a $50 a week Post reporter might get the equivalent of three weeks' extra salary.

Since Publisher Meyer bought the Post, sick and tottering with a circulation of 51,534 back in May 1933, from sick and tottering Edward Beale ("Ned") McLean for $825,000, its news lineage has gone up 68%; advertising lineage up 111%; circulation up 173% (140,536 copies averaged daily for last month). Besides it has become a journal of national importance, a reading must on Capitol Hill, an institution of high character and independence, a force for good in its bailiwick. This is a particularly striking record for a publisher whose previous experience was chiefly that of an investment banker, governor of the Federal Reserve Board and board chairman of RFC.

All Washington knows that Eugene Meyer enjoys being a publisher, but less well-known is how much his employes enjoy working for him. Endowed with the energy of a fast-feeding geyser, Publisher Meyer is a tremendous hobnobber, prowls the old Post building asking any and all hands their opinions on every conceivable subject. Behind his back the hands affectionately call him "Butch." He knows and loves it.

Veteran reporters and desk men still chuckle over a staff party he attended at the Willard Hotel. Noticing some of the boys kneeling in a circle in one corner, the former Governor of the Federal Reserve evinced interest, asked for an explanation" of crap shooting, then dropped on one knee, rattled the bones and proceeded to win all the money in the game.

The staff also likes to tell sentimentally of his wistful efforts to get an anti-Tugwell cartoon into his own paper. Slowly but inevitably Editor Morley (now president of Haverford College) would argue him out of it.

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