End of an Experience

The strange Roosevelt-Hearst misalliance in Seattle came to an end. John Boettiger (the late Franklin Roosevelt's son-in-law) and wife Anna stepped out of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. For eight and a half years John had been publisher, and Anna associate editor. Their reason for quitting: "irreconcilable differences" with Publisher William Randolph Hearst.

The irreconcilable differences had been there all along--but there had once been reasons for reconciling them. In 1936, Hearst's P-I had been shut down by a costly 15-week American Newspaper Guild strike, and was in bad odor with the New Dealing, labor-loving seaport of Seattle.

Wily old Hearst hired the Boettigers on the theory that a Roosevelt would make the P-I smell sweeter.

Boettiger tossed out all Hearst diatribes against his father-in-law (as no other Hearst editor ever dared do), chopped up Pegler's copy at will, hired Eleanor Roosevelt's "My Day" column, set wife Anna to writing a corny, folksy "homemaker's" column. P-I circulation spurted; so did advertising. The Boettigers became Cham ber of Commerce favorites, because they helped bring big federal construction projects to Seattle. Their New Deal editorials won them labor's friendship ; their obvious love for the Pacific Northwest won almost everybody else. The hardest-bitten skeptics came to agree that ex-Chicago Trib-uneman Boettiger put out a good paper.

In 1943, Boettiger went off to war. Anna stayed on for a while, then went to live at the White House. The P-I slipped right back into its old Hearstian tricks; and, as the only morning paper in war-booming Seattle, got away with it. The hopeful Boettigers continued to believe that Hearst would welcome them back and would let Boettiger continue to operate an unHearstian Hearst paper. The Boettigers even tried several times to buy the PI. Last week in Seattle, Lieut. Colonel John Boettiger, about to go on the Army's inactive list, learned what everyone else had known all along, and got out. Said he: "We greatly enjoyed the experience."

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