Sale of the Times-Herald

The Washington Post (circ. 201,645) and Washington Times-Herald (253,532) were about as unlike as two metropolitan dailies could be: the Post is internationalist and often New Dealish, although it backed Eisenhower; the Times-Herald was isolationist and archconservative, bore unhappily with Ike. But last week the two papers came to complete agreement on one of the biggest newspaper deals in U.S. history. For $8,500,000 the Post's Board Chairman Eugene Meyer, 78, bought the ailing (estimated $500,000 loss last year) Times-Herald from its ailing publisher, Colonel Robert R. (Chicago Tribune) McCormick, 73. The purchase gave the Post a monopoly in the capital's morning field.

A day after the sale, the Post came out bearing its own logotype plus the Times-Herald's. Technically, the purchase more than doubled the Post's old circulation. Actually, it is expected to level off at about 300,000, making it the biggest daily in the city. The Post also began to put out afternoon editions as the Times-Herald had, thus invading a territory held by the rich, successful Evening Star (circ. 234,660) and Scripps-Howard's tabloid News (138,778). Of the Times-Herald's 1,138 employees, more than 500 have been temporarily hired by the Post.

The Changeover. "Bertie" McCormick had good reason to sell. Ever since he bought the T-H for $4,500,000 in 1949 (from seven of the paper's top executives, who had been willed the paper by McCormick's cousin, Cissy Patterson), he has had trouble with it. McCormick transformed it from a racy, sensational, popular daily into a paper much like his Chicago Tribune, to bring "the United States [i.e., the colonel's isolationist view of the world] to Washington."

But the Times-Herald was in deep trouble. Circulation slumped steadily and advertising dropped off. Furthermore, the colonel was having problems with the rich Trib, whose circulation has fallen 17.6% from its 1946 peak. Two months ago, Post Chairman Meyer, who had tried to buy the T-H before, heard that the colonel was fed up with the Times-Herald and dispatched an emissary to McCormick's winter home in Boynton Beach, Fla. to sound him out about selling the paper.

Dissenting Voice. A fortnight ago, Philip Graham, 38, Post publisher and president and Meyer's son-in-law, got a mysterious phone call from a Trib vice president, who said guardedly: "There's a point to our meeting. It's brand-new to me." Phil Graham went out hastily to the airport to meet his father-in-law, returning from a Jamaica vacation, immediately started a series of meetings to buy the paper. Meyer insisted from the beginning that the negotiations be kept a complete secret and that there be no haggling over the price. He offered $8,500,000 (the price McCormick paid for it plus $4,000,000 that had gone into a spanking new T-H annex and equipment).

When the colonel and Meyer were in agreement, the Trib board was called together to discuss Meyer's bid. There was a dissenting voice: Ruth ("Bazy") Miller Tankersley, the colonel's niece, who was forced out as editor of the TimesHerald three years ago because the colonel disapproved of the way she was running the paper as well as of her divorce and her interest in a T-H editor, whom she later married. Bazy Tankersley, shocked to hear that the paper was to be sold, asked time to try to raise money to buy the Times-Herald herself. McCormick gave her exactly 45 hours. One of the possible backers she called was William

R. Hearst Jr., boss of the Hearst chain. With Bazy's approval, Hearst promptly set out to see if he could raise the money to buy the paper for himself.

Bazy also tried another tack. She called a long list of potential backers, including such conservative millionaires as Sears, Roebuck's Chairman General Robert Wood, ex-Ambassador to England Joseph Kennedy, and Texas Oilmen H. L. Hunt, Sid Richardson, Hugh Roy Cullen and Clint Murchison. Before her 45 hours were up, she had pledges for about $4,000,000, but when she asked the colonel for time to raise more, he said "No, no, no." The colonel was determined to sell to Meyer because he respected him as a professional newspaperman. The colonel did not want to sell to "amateurs." The Trib board met again, approved the sale to the Post. Bazy Tankersley was so angered by her uncle's action in selling the paper that she said "I hope I never see him again," took big, black-bordered "sympathy" ads in the Star and News to express her bitter regret over the death of the TH.

A 20-Year Dream. To Post Chairman Meyer, the T-H was well worth the $8,500,000* because it gave his Post "a strong economic position." Meyer, who originally bought the Post at auction in 1933 for $825,000, has had trouble building it up. It made money during World War II, then started to lose again. But under Phil Graham, the paper's operating chief since 1946, the Post has pulled out of the deep red, made a profit in 1952 and doubled it last year.

The merger will not change the Post's editorial policies or its basic format. While it has taken on some Times-Herald features, including a weekly column by Maryland McCormick, the colonel's wife (TIME, March 8), it has already dropped from the new combined paper such features as Columnist Westbrook Pegler and sensational, slapdash Labor Columnist Victor Riesel. Graham expects relatively clear sailing ahead. Said he: "(Buying the TH) was the culmination of Eugene Meyer's effort for the Post for over 20 years."

* A down payment of $1,500,000 and the balance by the end of the year. The Post gets the entire physical property of the Times-Herald, will sell its presses to the Chicago Tribune for about $1,500,000. It also gets possession of Colonel McCormick's $130,000 Washington home and takes on the responsibility of paying close to $750,000 in severance pay to the Times-Herald employees who do not get jobs working on the Post.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.