The Hearst Formula

"We can't afford to penalize our good papers any more," said a Hearst executive last week. "With modern newspaper economics, you just can't tap a good paper to carry a dog." With this unsentimental epitaph, the 14-paper Hearst chain lopped off another link: the faltering Detroit Times, which Hearst sold to its afternoon rival, the independent Detroit News, for $10 million.

Caught in a squeeze between the News (circ. 480,673) and the morning Detroit Free Press (500,220), the Times has long been courting disaster, and its demise has been freely predicted (TIME, May 9). Between 1950 and the moment of its death, the Times's circulation plunged from 440,317 to 373,295, and only transfusions from healthier members of the Hearst empire kept the paper alive.

Profits, Not Power. Despite inheriting a stable of Hearst regulars like George E. Sokolsky and Dorothy Kilgallen from the Times, the News quickly discovered that the $10 million purchase price provided no guarantee for picking up the Times's readership. Acting quickly upon rumors of the sale, the rival Free Press raided the Times's circulation department, hired away 125 employees ranging from branch managers to newsboys. As a lure to former Times readers, the Free Press also began printing an afternoon "family edition," which is being sent to the Times's old delivery stations. Goaded into action, the News has started to strike back, printing 400,000 extra copies daily to be circulated to the Times's subscribers. With a full-scale circulation war threatening, fights have broken out between News and Free Press dealers, and both papers report that stacks of their papers have been looted or destroyed.

The sale of the Times continues the cutback of the Hearst chain since control of the empire passed to Hearst Corporation President Richard Berlin after the death of William Randolph Hearst in 1951. More interested in profits than press power, Berlin got rid of the Chicago American and the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, merged the San Francisco Call-Bulletin with Scripps-Howard's San Francisco News. Says one Hearst executive: "For years our strong papers--Baltimore, San Antonio, Seattle, Los Angeles--have been drained by losing operations. In the last two years we have decided on concentrating our resources in those areas where there is a possibility of making a profit."

No Drain-Off. Such concentration of resources has given the chain a semblance of stability and room to expand. Last month Hearst bought the Albany Knickerbocker News for $3,850,000, giving the chain a monopoly in New York's capital city. In Baltimore, where the News-Post ranks behind the Sun papers, Hearst has earmarked $5,000,000 for expansion of plant and production facilities. "You've got to show the community that you have faith in your paper," says a Hearst executive. "If you have, the community will have too."

In San Francisco, Hearst has fired the managing editor of the Examiner, the "monarch" of the chain, replaced him with Troubleshooter Lee Ettleson to face the challenge of the San Francisco Chronicle, which has crept to within 12,083 of the Examiner's circulation. With the period of attrition over, the chain is looking at new properties, is currently dickering for two papers, one in the East, one in the West. "We're not going to drain off success any more," says a Hearst man. ''From now on, our formula is going to be that we're going to reinforce it."

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