Chicagoland on the Potomac

In Washington, where the thermometer stood in the balmy upper 60s, the Times-Herald's Page One cartoon was a stopper. J. Q. Public was being smacked by a snowball labeled "early snowfall." Apparently, the paper's absentee owner, Colonel Robert R. McCormick, had decided that when Chicago has an early snow, Washington should observe it.

Importing the weather from Chicagoland (where there was a blizzard last week) was merely aging (71) Bertie McCormick's latest step in remaking the Times-Herald in the image of his Chicago Tribune. Already, the T-H was using Trib-style type and makeup, parroting its editorials and columnists, using the Trib's truncated spellings (sherif, frate), even leading off the weekly football predictions (piped in from Chicago) with Midwestern games. Cracked one Washington newshand: "All he needs to do is call it the Washington Tribune.'"

Comes the Ax. When Bertie dumped his niece, Bazy Miller, as editor last spring and took personal charge of his Washington outpost (TIME, April 16), his new staff gurgled with good cheer. After all, they said, "no matter what you may think of McCormick's policies," he is a good man to work for. Their cheer was shortlived. Instead of pay boosts, there were cost-trimmings and firings. Quick to go were Bazy's pets.

The new gold lettering on Bazy's office door reads "Colonel Robert R. McCormick" (staff members slyly salute as they pass), but the room behind it is seldom used. The colonel has been in Washington less than half a dozen times since he took command. Officially, the paper's top editorial brass hat is Frank Waldrop, longtime executive editor. Waldrop insists that Tribunizing the T-H is his own idea and that he sold McCormick on it. But Washington newsmen believe that Bertie's mouthpiece in the capital is really Walter Trohan, chief of the Tribune's Washington bureau. They say Trohan was offered the Times-Herald editorship, but turned it down, prefers to sit backstage.

Carbon Copy. Onstage, the Times-Herald was almost a completely new show. One of the new regime's first acts was to turn Page 3--the "rape and murder page"--into a stodgy collection of straight news. Says Waldrop: "We want to be a little bit stuffy." But as the paper began to look more & more like a carbon copy of the Tribune, staff morale ebbed. Many Times-Herald veterans quit, among them the sport editor, editorial cartoonist, picture editor, and night city editor.

Many an old reader felt the same way. It still was the capital's only around-the-clock daily, and its biggest (circ. 268,000). But the T-H had lost 10,000 readers in a year, while its rivals were gaining. Advertising, too, had slumped, notably local retail ads.

Advertisers, like readers, were shying away because the Times-Herald was no longer the big show it had been when the late Cissy Patterson ran it. Then, at least, it was a lively, hell-raising sheet. Bertie McCormick's new Times-Herald was as dull as a year-old want ad.

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