I Like the Business

I Like the Business"

Bulky, cherry-cheeked Roy Herbert Thomson, 66, was once described by a female employee as "a money-grasping old goat, but a dear old goat at that." In London, where he now headquarters, he has been variously called "the Henry Ford of journalism" (by the Observer), a "ruthless hustler with a Midas touch" (by the Communist Daily Worker) and "a religious man." This last description comes from Thomson himself, who adds: "It's against my religious principles to lose money."

Whatever anyone may think of him, one fact about Roy Thomson stands beyond dispute: he owns 76 newspapers in six countries, more than anyone else in the world. Only 21 years out of the Canadian North country, he invaded London last year. Fleet Street, which has seen many a more flamboyant press lord come and go, now realizes that Thomson means to stay. Fleet Street is in trouble. Only last month the venerable Liberal News Chronicle and its companion, the Star, folded for the simple reason that they could not make money--despite a combined circulation of more than 2,000,000. Thomson himself recently sold out his Sunday Empire News (circ. 2,000,000) and has earmarked his ailing Sunday Graphic (circ. 880,000) for early execution.

"Why Else?" Thomson is different from the usual Fleet Street press lord who goes after power, prestige, a peerage or who, like another transplanted Canadian, Lord Beaverbrook, wants to exhort ("I run the paper purely for the purpose of making propaganda," Press Lord Beaverbrook once said). Thomson expects to earn almost $20 million this year on his $130 million empire. This prospect delights him. "A sound financial front is the most important thing in a newspaper," he said last week. "Why else would you be in the news business? Either it's because you're mad at somebody, or the way things are being handled. Or else you want to preach. The only other reason is that it's business. I like the business."

Thomson has a sort of small-boy wonder about his own success. "Have you ever heard of anything bigger?" he asked while marveling at his own audacity in paying $14 million for a two-thirds interest in England's big Kemsley chain. But he keeps his adult head about him. Horrified to discover that the 40-page Sunday Times was turning away ads for lack of space, Thomson gave orders to add eight pages, intends to go to 64 if necessary.

"Jeez, There's Nothing . . ." Roy Thomson is fond of saying: "We can expand indefinitely." Son of a Toronto barber, Thomson at 24 had managed to accumulate, and then blow, a small fortune in Saskatchewan land speculation. In 1929 he went to North Bay, Ont. to sell radios, Branched into broadcasting to push his product and in 1934, for $200 down and $200 a month, bought a moribund weekly called the Timmins Press. One of the unfledged publisher's first moves was to send dime to each of 100 small U.S. dailies, hen the copies came in, Thomson read hem and reached his conclusion: "Jeez, here's nothing in them we can't do." The Timmins Press went daily in 1935.

Out of the Rat Race. On its modest success, Roy Thomson has pyramided his empire. He drives hard bargains, e.g., he bought the Edinburgh Scotsman for $3,000,000, or only $600,000 more than the construction cost of its 13-story plant. He pays ad salesmen more than reporters, likes to say "there's nothing in this business that a few thousand dollars worth of advertising won't cure." But along the pathway to profit, Thomson picked up some of the instincts of a newspaperman. Selling the Empire News and getting rid of the Sunday Graphic makes good business sense, but even better newspaper sense : they are members of the British "popular press," which peddles sex and sensation for news. "I could only hope to keep them on as salacious papers," he said. "Frankly I don't want to get in that kind of rat race." Under Thomson, the Kemsley chain, once starchily conservative, has drifted towards the middle of the road. There Thomson is wooing Britain's rising mid dle class. He has added a culture-packed Saturday supplement to several of his dailies, beefed up news columns, hired cor respondents on the Continent to expand foreign coverage, "Looking All the Time." "Actually," said one Thomson employee last week, "the only conservative thing about Thom son is his money." Thomson encourages this view. He tells risque stories at stuffy editorial conferences, invites everyone to call him Roy, and rides the London underground more often than his blue Cadillac or Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. Thom son's editors have full rein: "I've got people with a helluva lot more editorial ability than I've got, and I'd be doing them and myself a disservice to inject myself into the papers." Besides, Roy Thomson is too busy peering through his binocular-thick glasses at more good buys on the world's far horizons. It is an open Fleet Street secret that he has designs on the London Daily Telegraph (circ. 1,220,389), biggest and most popular of London's "quality" dailies. And he has far from satisfied his appetite for papers in the U.S., where he has only eight (biggest: the St. Peters burg, Fla. Times), including five weeklies. Says Thomson longingly : "There are thou sands of papers there, and I'm looking all the time."

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