Death Throes in Phoenix

Judged by the record, the odds against a newborn daily newspaper's surviving infancy are astronomical. In Phoenix, Ariz., those long odds overtook the nation's youngest metropolitan daily, the Arizona Journal. Scant weeks short of its first birthday, the Journal found itself out of print, out of money, heavily in debt, and laid out for burial. About all that kept the infant paper out of the grave was a flicker of outside interest.

The Journal's quickstep march to disaster provided one more lesson in the brutal economics of daily journalism. Before starting the new paper. Publisher (and onetime Arizona attorney general) Robert Morrison, 53, raised $1,500,000. But merely getting born took all but $100,000 of that. By the time the paper produced its first issue--which came out eight hours late--the Journal was already suffering from malnutrition. Eugene Pulliam, whose two conservative dailies blanket Phoenix,* contemptuously ignored the newcomer. And, after a while, so did many of the people who had shared Bob Morrison's conviction that a liberal paper could survive in Gene Pulliam's desert fief. From a starting 50,000, circulation dropped to 20,000. Ad accounts evaporated.

A parvenu playing a game that calls for expertise, Publisher Morrison made many costly mistakes. The Journal's vaunted liberalism was never more than timid; its qualifications as a newspaper were never better than just fair. Toward the end, the paper was losing $90,000 a month, and the till was so bare that Morrison borrowed money from his own loyal staffers--many of whom have not been paid since mid-December.

The Journal's presses came to a halt after one of its more unsentimental creditors, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, demanded payment of some $200,000 in back taxes and penalties. Showing remarkable patience, the IRS stayed action--even advanced the paper $800 for an emergency supply of paper and ink--while Morrison went hunting for prospective buyers. But although he located a few--among them Publisher Hank Greenspun of the Las Vegas, Nev., Sun--none seemed overeager to buy a paper that is $1,200,000 in hock.

* Pulliam also publishes the Indianapolis News and the Star back home in Indiana.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.