People's Press

A pigtailed, freckled nine-year-old tripped into the Cleveland Press last week and asked to see the editor. Instead of being shooed away, she was led straight to his office. Louis B. Seltzer shook Ruth Harriger by the hand, then gravely read the note she thrust out to him. It was from Ruth's father, an ex-Clevelander now living in New Mexico. He had written her to be sure to call on the Press while visiting in Cleveland. Busy Editor Seltzer dropped everything to take her on a tour of his shop, bought her an ice cream bar as she left.

Partly because it is never too busy to see people, the Scripps-Howard Press has become the biggest, richest and most influential paper in Cleveland. Its red carpet is always out for readers, whether they come with a complaint, a hillbilly band or (it has happened) leading a bear, a goat or an elephant. They also bring in plenty of stories.

The Press hovers over its readers from cradle to grave, enrolls them in its "Toddlers' Club" as infants, gives free golden wedding parties for them in their old age. It counsels its readers, consoles them and fights their civic battles so well that, like Reader Harriger, they regard it as an old friend rather than a commercial enterprise.

In trying to describe the difference between the Press and most other papers, Roy W. Howard once said: "It's a paper with a heart." The heart beats strongly enough to make the Press the healthiest in the chain; the profit is $2,000,000 a year. For ten years the Press (now 280,000 daily) has run ahead of the Plain Dealer (255,000) and News (140,000).

What Makes Louie Run. The man who makes the heart beat is short (5 ft. 5 in.), impish Louie Seltzer, just starting his 21st year as boss of the Press. Seltzer was born in a cottage back of a Cleveland firehouse, the son of Charles Alden Seltzer, an ex-cowpuncher who wrote westerns. Louis quit school at 10 to be a copy boy on the late Leader, became a cub reporter at 18. One day a new building collapsed in downtown Cleveland. Down three flights of stairs from the old Press city room scampered Seltzer on his way to the scene. On a landing he caromed into big-bellied Publisher E. W. Scripps, who picked him up, held him at arm's length and asked what was the hurry. Piped Seltzer indignantly: "Put me down, sir, put me down! I'm covering a story."

He has never stopped running. A year after he ran into the boss, supercharged Louis Seltzer was city editor of the Press. At 20, having proved that he could hold the job, he quit it to get more experience as a legman and political reporter. (In 1924, covering the Democratic Convention, he got an 18-day scoop on the nomination of John W. Davis.) He knew his town like a well-thumbed diary when he became the Press's editor at 30. He also well remembered Founder Scripps's publishing maxim: "Stay close to the people."

Although he belongs to the swankUnion Club, earns more than $50,000 a year, and owns three dozen suits, Louis Seltzer is closer to the people than any other Clevelander. "I'd like to keep my desk in Public Square," he says. Skid Row bums, as well as millionaires, sing out "Hi, Louie" when he walks the streets. His crusades, which have flushed out their share of corrupt public officials and racketeers, have made some enemies too. Once, in a drugstore, one of them shoved a pistol in Seltzer's ribs and threatened to blow him up. While Seltzer's wife and children looked on in open-mouthed horror, he talked the gun toter out of it. "I like threats," says Seltzer. "They prove we're doing our job."

Keeping Ahead. He starts his 14-hour day at 5:45 a.m. (6:15 by his own watch, which he keeps half an hour ahead). He spends little of it at his desk, wastes none of it in drinking or smoking, rarely ends it without making an after-dinner speech at one of the 134 organizations he belongs to.

Seltzer is free & easy with his 160-man staff (half of them started as office boys) and encourages horseplay. Once a photographer locked him in the men's room, took a ludicrous picture of Seltzer climbing out the transom and posted it on the city room's bulletin board. At his daily staff meetings, even the office boys are free to suggest stories or second-guess the editorials. Staffers may spend months, if necessary, digging up stories. (Reporter Clayton Fritchey spent six months investigating a cemetery-lot racket and won a Pulitzer citation for his series.) Seltzer thinks that "when you put a paper together between editions, it reads like it."

The Scripps-Howard home office on Manhattan's Park Avenue gives Editor Seltzer free rein. He doesn't have to print the chain's canned editorials, and he can run Columnist Tom Stokes--whose liberal views are sometimes too much for Howard--as often as he likes. Howard has tried to lure him East to a bigger job, with no luck.

"I like people more than I do money," Seltzer says shortly. "I guess I'm the bad boy of the outfit. Sometimes Roy Howard gets a little annoyed with me. But I'd a hell of a lot rather be criticized by the people at 230 Park Avenue than by the people of Cleveland."

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