Enough Is Never Enough

At 66, a Canadian named Roy Thomson has become an international press lord without peer or precedent (TIME, Nov. 14). Beginning in 1934 with a back-country Canadian newspaper, Businessman Thomson has quietly forged a chain of 76 newspapers (including London's prestigious Sunday Times) in six countries. Last week, round, rosy and insatiable, Thomson laid out $5,500,000 to add five new links to his chain in still another country: Northern Ireland.

For his money, Thomson acquires a five-sixths interest in the venerable, liberal Belfast Telegraph (circ. 196,000), biggest and best daily in Northern Ireland's overcrowded field, plus the Belfast Weekly Telegraph, the daily Telegraph's international edition, which circulates to Irishmen round the world. The deal also includes Ireland Saturday Night, a prosperous sports magazine with 100,000 subscribers, and two other thriving Irish weeklies.

Thomson also announced an impending expansion of his beachhead in Africa, where he recently bought a half interest in a Nigerian newspaper chain. Provided he gets a go-ahead from Emperor Haile Selassie ("who seemed very responsive"), Thomson intends to establish an Ethiopian news agency and two Ethiopian dailies--one in English and one in Amharic. And in partnership with the youthful Aga Khan, he is laying plans for five new papers in Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika.

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