The Trib of the Other Side

Each morning the New York Herald Tribune (circ. 350,966) rolls off its Manhattan presses in a grueling fourth-place struggle against its competitors--the Daily News (circ. 2,025,229), the Mirror (836,810) and the Times (673,974). An ocean away in Paris, home of the Trib's Continental alter ego, the picture is far different. Last week, following a pattern of years, the European edition of the Herald Tribune splashed prosperously across 45 countries, in each of which it enjoys something close to dominance. The European Trib is not only the biggest English-language paper on the Continent, but it also consistently makes money (about $100,000 before taxes last year, v. an estimated $2,000,000 loss by its New York parent).

Out of Paris by swift truck and chartered plane go 65,000 copies daily--80,000 when the tourists swarm. In the last five years as tourism has grown, the Trib has boosted subscriptions 90% and newsstand sales 34%, is so much a European fixture that it appears regularly behind the Iron Curtain, on Polish and Yugoslavian kiosks. It charges almost the same ad rates as Paris' Le Figaro (circ. 475,000), yet steamship companies and resorts are eager to do business with the Trib.

"Old Philadelphia Lady." By ordinary publishing rules, the Paris Herald should have perished with its creator, the late James Gordon Bennett Jr., madcap son of the New York Herald's founder. While Bennett lived, the newspaper was never much more than an expensive plaything. Self-exiled to Europe after a series of escapades, Bennett established the Paris Herald in 1887 mostly as a buffer against his own ennui. Save for a glorious hour at the outbreak of the first World War, when Bennett resolutely published under the German guns after even the government had fled, the Herald for three decades played the role of society paper for expatriates, subject to Bennett's iron whim (without giving a reason, he ordered a letter from an "old Philadelphia lady," inquiring how to convert centigrade readings to Fahrenheit,* reprinted daily for 18 years).

In 1920, when the New York Herald was sold to Frank A. Munsey, the Paris Herald was tossed into the deal. To Munsey it was an unexpected windfall; the war, with its tide of Yanks, had swollen circulation to 400,000 and brought untabulated prosperity. Munsey found a cool $1,000,000 cash in the Paris Herald's bank account. But the prosperity was short-lived. Munsey pared the Paris budget to the marrow, handed the paper over as a dubious dividend when he sold the New York Herald in 1924 to Ogden Reid's New York Tribune.

Professionally and financially, the Paris orphan plumbed new depths during the years leading up to World War II. Circulation fell below 15,000; the paper, dependent on tourist advertising, shamelessly painted a false picture of Europe so as not to lose it. It applauded Mussolini's rape of Ethiopia, turned its back on Hitler's invasion of Austria to editorialize on mothers-in-law. But the paper always had a smattering of good newsmen, e.g., Elliot Paul, Eric Sevareid, CBS Newscaster Ned Calmer, all of whom apprenticed there. And when a veteran staffer, Eric Hawkins, was appointed managing editor in 1925, the Paris 'Trib began to take new direction.

Stocks, Bonds & Buchwald. British-born Eric Hawkins, who hired on as a copyreader in 1915 after abandoning a vain ambition to box, played up the New York markets, banking on the hunch that this was "must" reading to tourists. This and Columnist Art Buchwald, who walked in one day ten years ago and asked for a job, are the Trib's two most popular features. Roaming the Continent's nightclubs and halls of state, Buchwald gradually assumed the same institutional quality as his employer; his 1953 column explaining Thanksgiving Day to the Trib's 13,000 French readers is reprinted every year.

With stocks, bonds and Buchwald, the Paris Trib has left other English-language papers far behind on the Continent; the New York Times's slender International edition (circulation about 8,000), printed in Amsterdam, reaches readers a full day or more after the Trib. "Le New York," as the French fondly call it, is more than a daily paper--it is a European institution, like the Flea Market and the Bourse, the Rhine and the Rhone.

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