Hoosier Dark Horse

Who would buy the fat, conservative Indianapolis Star with its morning (circ. 128,959) and Sunday (circ. 189,963) monopoly? Since the death, six months ago, of the paper's owner-publisher, John Charles Shaffer, various buyers have been mentioned: Marshall Field, Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, the Cowles brothers of Des Moines and Minneapolis, Roy Wilson Howard.

Last week control of the Star, for close to $2,500,000, went to none of these. The buyer was tall, crew-cropped Eugene Collins Pulliam, 55, identified more with Hoosier radio than with newspapers (although he publishes the Vincennes Sun Commercial, the Huntington Herald-Press, the Lebanon Reporter)*

In the same deal, Pulliam got the other Shaffer paper, the Muncie Star (circ. 24,821). Indianapolis buzzed anew with reports that Marshall Field's bank roll was behind Publisher Pulliam. It was not. Big, beaming Smith Davis, Cleveland newspaper broker, had arranged and so hidden the deal that no one had seriously suspected Pulliam.

* His Central Newspapers, Inc. owns WIRE (NBC), Indianapolis, and WAOV, Vincennes; and has an interest in WKBV, Richmond, and KPHO, Phoenix, Ariz.

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