Let History Try

Everyone in the Minneapolis evening Star and morning Tribune city rooms knew who John Cowles Jr. was: he was the son of President John Cowles Sr., 61, who runs the papers.* But when John Jr. moved into a vice-presidency and the associate editorship of the Star and the Tribune last summer, no one really knew quite what he was. Last week the Star and Tribune staff found out: John Cowles Jr., 31, is the heir apparent, and already beginning to take power.

What happened was plenty plain: John Jr. fired out of hand the Star and Tribune's Executive Editor William P.Steven, 51, longtime right arm of Cowles Sr. It had been obvious for months that John Jr.'s ideas about newspapering differed from Steven's policies of aggressive promotion and firehouse news hounding. Finally told that he must clear his orders through John Jr., Steven balked--and got booted. That left John Cowles Jr. as undisputed operating boss.

Kiwanis to Kremlin. John Jr. is the first member of the third generation of Cowleses to sit in an executive suite of the chain that was founded by Gardner Cowles Sr. in 1903, when he bought the foundering Des Moines Register & Leader. Today the Cowles papers cover everything from the Kiwanis to the Kremlin, have a Midwestern hegemony over large parts of Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas and western Wisconsin.

A graduate of Exeter and Harvard, as were his father and uncle, John Jr. also shares their interest in foreign affairs. Before enlisting in the Army in 1951, he journeyed around the world with former ECA Administrator Paul Hoffman. Out of the Army as a lieutenant, John Jr. worked hard at the job of heir apparent. He served hitches on the police-court and city-hall beat, covered the state legislature before making a swing through the business departments. A diligent rather than a brilliant reporter, John Jr. occasionally dismayed the Tribune's pavement-pounding old hands. Once, for example, he discovered a corpse on his way to work. Like any public-spirited citizen, but not like most working reporters, he called the police first, then and only then phoned his city desk.

A Little Greyer. A handsome, very serious young man, who lives with his wife and three children on a 60-acre estate near Minneapolis and tools to work in a white Triumph sports car. John Jr. is respected by most Star and Tribune staffers for character and determination. "Under him. no department-store advertiser is going to push us around," says a staffer. "The ad people are going to stay down on their floor." But John Jr. is not beloved. "We will become a little greyer." says another staffer. "The papers may be more intellectual, but they may be stuffier and less fun. too." As for John Jr., he declines to predict, saying: "I prefer to let history write its future."

* And with his younger brother, Gardner ("Mike") Cowles, 57, controls a press chain that includes, besides the Star and the Tribune, the Des Moines Register and Tribune, the San Fernando Valley Times, Look magazine, two radio and four television stations.

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