The Quiet Revolution

In the ten months since his father died, New Publisher William Randolph Hearst Jr. has started a quiet revolution in the Hearst publishing empire. "I don't want to rap the Old Man," said one Chicago Herald-American newsman last week, "but this is a young, vigorous organization now. We've changed. Local editors can put out their own papers now without waiting to hear from headquarters."

Oldtimers, who remember the famous wires ("The Chief Suggests") that set Hearstlings to waving the flag or jumping into battle against vivisectionists, women in bars and other pet Hearst peeves, find a totally different climate. The new day began for the papers in the chain when Bill Hearst sent all his editors this instruction: . . . Use the greatest care to avoid bias or lack of objectivity in the handling of the news . . . News must be presented without partiality . . . Our news and campaigns . . . should not be extreme, unfair or one-sided . . . Please impart this point of view to all members of your editorial staff."

Trimming the Boss. In keeping with its new autonomy, San Francisco's Call-Bulletin revamped its entertainment section without a word of advice from headquarters. "In the old days," says Editor Lee Ettelson, "I couldn't possibly have done it without taking it down to San Simeon a couple of times for Mr. Hearst to tear it to pieces and rearrange." The Detroit Times, which seldom ran anything but canned editorials, now regularly runs two or three editorials a day on local subjects.

Hearst's own copy, by his own instructions, gets copydesk treatment. His "Editor's Report" on Europe ("And so, as they say in the travelogues, we say goodbye to good old Europa") was condensed by some Hearst editors.

Papers in the chain have been changing their makeup, dumping the old circus & gingerbread style that was a Hearst trademark. In its place have come cleaner headline type, fewer screaming bannerlines and a more up-to-date, readable layout. Gigantic cartoons and other boiler plate that once poured out of Hearst headquarters are now passed up by editors whenever they will, and even such well-entrenched Hearst columnists as Westbrook Pegler and George Sokolsky may be dropped or trimmed as editors desire.

Proving Ground. Bill Hearst's home paper, the New York Journal-American, is a testing ground for the changes. Its front-page and inside make-up is being transformed and its editorials have taken a sharp turn toward more temperate writing, more attention to local issues. But nowhere is the new broom more evident than in the American Weekly, Sunday magazine supplement for the chain. As a result of an overhauling that has been in the works for eight months, the weekly has been completely revamped and modernized (TIME, Dec. 31).

Staffers seem not only to like the editorial changes, but to approve of Publisher Hearst himself. In his trips around the country, Hearstlings find his "call me Bill" a welcome change from the pomp & ceremony that marked the Old Man's visits. Bill Hearst says that continual, if gradual, change has now become the order of the day.

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