The Top U.S. Dailies

A great newspaper is more than a garbage can liner . . . more than a fish wrapper . . . more than a paper doll . . . more than a child's kite.

It would be hard to find fault with any one of the propositions advanced by the San Francisco Chronicle in a series of promotion ads. But the Chronicle was unable--or unwilling--to go one long step farther, to spell out what a great newspaper is, rather than what it is not.

Many newspapers and many newsmen have tried to define greatness, and all their efforts only show a wide disagreement on where greatness lies--or even how to get there. William Rockhill Nelson, founder of the Kansas City Star, took an alimentary approach. "God's great gift to man is appetite," he said. "Put nothing in the paper that will destroy it." Wilbur Storey of the Chicago Times (now the Sun-Times) once classified a newspaper's highest duty as "printing the news and raising hell." Thomas Gibson, who established the Denver Rocky Mountain Herald in 1860, defined a great newspaper as one "untrammeled by sinister influence from any quarter--advocate of the right and denouncer of the wrong--an independent vehicle for the free expression of all candid, honest and intelligent minds."*

Markedly Unsuccessful. Some such proud creed ripples from dozens of newspaper mastheads, nailed up--but seldom nailed down--by high-minded publishers. Dozens of other mastheads support unvarnished claims to greatness, as if the quality were something that has merely to be claimed to be possessed. The Chicago Tribune, for example, has been the "World's Greatest Newspaper" since 1911, when Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, the paper's founder, unilaterally decided that the description fitted. Whatever tie the Tribune may have had to the title was ruptured by the colonel's death in 1955.

Extramural attempts to define greatness by ranking the U.S. press in order of merit have been markedly unsuccessful. Since 1952, Publicist Edward L. Bernays has solicited U.S. daily-newspaper publishers three times to nominate the country's ten "best" dailies--a superlative that Bernays does not define. All three ballots have shown such consistency of choice as to support the suspicion that the publishers have been picking papers mostly from habit. Over a span of ten years (1952-62), twelve names sufficed to fill all three lists. And by most journalistic standards, the invariable third choice, the Christian Science Monitor, cannot properly be considered a daily newspaper. The Monitor's editorial policy is subject to the precepts of the Church of Christ, Scientist, which owns it. Nor does the paper bother to pay much respect to the despotic deadlines that rule the rest of the daily press.

One in Eight. Journalism schools preserve a cautious silence on the subject of journalistic greatness. Last spring, when Dean Edward Barrett of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism let slip the opinion that there were only 18 "good" U.S. dailies, he was immediately asked for their names. Barrett declined the invitation. Said he: "You don't think I'm going to get trapped into saying that, do you?"

The dean's reticence is understandable. He might have been asked to justify and compare his picks. And no one yet has found a fair and reliable means for measuring any two newspapers on the same scale. Reading tastes, requirements and styles vary so widely that to grade the performance of the New York Times, say, against that of the Minneapolis Tribune would do an injustice to both papers.

In a speech last September, the Tribune's president, John Cowles, pointed out that the New York Times reached only one in eight families in its distribution area. "It simply doesn't appeal," said Cowles, "to the seven-eighths of the population who have less education and less intellectual curiosity" than the Times assumes of its readers. Concluded Cowles: "No Minneapolis paper that appealed to only one-eighth of the people here could possibly survive."

Conscience & Guide. But despite such difficulties of comparison, ways do exist for gauging newspaper excellence. All superior papers have something in common, wherever they are published and for whatever readership. The late Paul Patterson, onetime publisher of the Baltimore Sunpapers, pointed out one common denominator: "If you put out a good enough paper, people will read it. If enough people read it, advertisers will support it." The statement illuminates a fundamental truth: newspapering is a business, and a good business makes money.

Beyond this purely commercial factor lie others that bear on a newspaper's place in its community. Any paper, even a poor one, is inevitably cast by its readers in the role of community conscience, guardian and guide. The truly great newspaper eagerly, tirelessly and aggressively acts the part; it becomes deeply immersed in the main currents of its community. The truly great newspaper is also consumed by a catholic curiosity that carries its readers along with it.

With these criteria, and with the experience gained in 40 years of appraising the performance of the Press, TIME has made its own choice of the top daily newspapers in the U.S., culled from the country's 1,760 dailies. The unranked selections, in alphabetical order:

THE SUN

The Baltimore Sun will be free, firm and temperate.

--From its first issue Circulation 187,000 mornings. 215,000 evenings. 330,000 Sundays. Independent-Democrat. Supported Roosevelt in 1932, no one in 1936. Republicans since.

The Sun is the unbending patriarch of Baltimore, and acutely conscious of the dignity and the responsibilities of venerable old age. Like a wise old uncle exercising his seniority, it tells Baltimoreans what to do, and Baltimoreans apparently listen. Faced with a perplexing maze of 20 municipal bond issues in a 1962 election, most voters clipped a Sun editorial, took it to the polls, and followed the paper's recommendations to the letter. The Sun demands a high order of intelligence from its readers. Stories are written not to entertain but to inform; text is never displaced for purely cosmetic considerations--by a picture, say, to break up a formidable-looking front page. If Baltimoreans do not know what is going on everywhere, their ignorance is not the Sun's fault. It staffs bureaus all over the world, keeps 14 men in Washington. Upon being asked if the Sun was a crusading paper, Managing Editor Charles H. Dorsey answered with feeling: "Good God, I hope we never become one." His style is the style of Arunah Shepherdson Abell, the vagabond printer who started the Sun in 1837 and whose descendants are still on the board. The paper remains aloof, aristocratic, oldfashioned, proud and something of a snob--just the way Baltimoreans like it.

The Cleveland Press

The Press strives to be with the people, always at their side, always beating with their hearts.

-- Louis B. Seltzer

Circulation 353,000 evenings. Independent. Endorsed Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936, has since backed Republicans for President.

Louis Seltzer, 66, who has edited the Press since 1928, has kept Cleveland first in his heart. Ohio comes next. Then the U.S., and then the world. After that, perhaps, come the interests of the Scripps-Howard chain to which the paper belongs. No cause is too large for the Press--or too small. It hid a camera in a bawdyhouse and snapped pictures of city cops taking lunch there. When the Press disagreed with the Cleveland Bar Association's candidate for the municipal bench, it asked its readers to write in the name of an unknown young lawyer whom the paper preferred. The young lawyer won. If the Press likes a politician, it can boost him into almost any office. Frank Lausche, a Democrat, rose from Cleveland mayor to Ohio Governor to U.S. Senator on Press support. If the Press doesn't like a politician, the whole city soon finds out. Before an election last November, the Press's rundown of candidates identified one aspiring city councilman as "an admitted tax cheat," another as "Front man for a slum landlord." Monuments to the Press's love for the city dot the landscape: a handsome lakefront development, an expanded public hall, new low-cost apartment houses built over slums, a new community college. But Seltzer and the Press are too busy to pause and admire their handiwork. The paper throws parties for the bassinet set and Golden Wedding couples. It sends Nationalities Editor Theodore Andrica abroad just to look up relatives of foreign-born Clevelanders. Some years ago, when an indigent old woman died alone in the city, leaving a note and a dog, authorities were not surprised to discover that the note was addressed to the Press. "The only thing I own is my dog," read the note. "Please take it to the Press. I know the home they find will be a good one."

Los Angeles Times

Stand fast, stand firm, stand sure, stand true.

--Colonel Harrison Gray Otis

Circulation 762,000 mornings. 1,100,000 Sundays. Independent-Republican. Has endorsed Republicans for President since 1932.

Many of the Los Angeles Times's proudest achievements lie behind it, the work of a fiery Union Army colonel who charged into the city in the 1880s. From the editor's desk chair, Harrison Gray Otis directed Los Angeles' destiny as if that stretch of parched Western littoral were his private command. His editorials helped break the railroads' throttle hold on the city; his campaigns got a harbor built and brought desperately needed water 240 miles over the mountains from the Owens River. Before Otis died, the Times was a dominant Los Angeles institution. Like all institutions, it stood in danger of succumbing to the temptations of complacency. But Otis Chandler, 36, the Times's new publisher and the colonel's great-grandson, is determined to keep the Times as viable as the burgeoning community it patrols. The disjointed collection of patio grills and palm-fringed superhighways is not a newspaper-reading community; recent mergers have reduced its newspaper census from four to two. But the Times remains a local necessity. In Chandler's three years at the top, he has raised the editorial budget by 60%; an expanded news staff now spreads over eight foreign capitals. Today the Times covers big international stories with the same craftsmanship that it has long applied to the Southern California scene.

The Courier-Journal

Our role is to inform, but in addition to enlighten and persuade.

--George Barry Bingham

Circulation 225,000 mornings. 329,000 Sundays. Independent-Democrat. Has supported Democrats for President since 1932.

Soon after the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court school integration decision, the Louisville Courier-Journal opened a crusade so low keyed that many readers did not realize a crusade was going on. For nearly two years, the Journal took pains to report in detail instances of peaceful integration everywhere. The running story was buttressed by quiet editorials designed to disarm prejudice before it could arise. In 1956, the Journal's crusade ended in unspectacular triumph: Louisville's public school system was voluntarily desegregated--without incident. Such liberalism on the subject of the South's touchy race problem goes back a long way. "Marse Henry" Watterson, the Journal's first editor, was at best a neutralist. But Robert Worth Bingham, the man who bought the paper in 1918, was not. Under him and his son George Barry, who succeeded him as publisher, the Journal became an early champion of the Negro's full rights as a citizen. Louisville has been accustomed by long habit to seeing Negro faces in the paper's society section. Other Journal roles suit the paper well--and suit Kentucky too. Because the state highway department absorbs one-third of the budget, the Journal keeps a man prying fulltime into the department's affairs--just in case. A Journal investigation of political influence in Kentucky's schoolboard system blew the whole system apart and sent one superintendent to prison. The Journal stays hard at work moving ahead of its readers, then gently but persistently urging them to catch up.

THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL

Whatever they say about us, they can't control us. We're out to serve the public. That's a redblooded, virile statement, and, by God, it's true.

--Harry Grant

Circulation 377,000 evenings. 570,000 Sundays. Independent. Since 1932 has supported a Democrat for President five times (Roosevelt twice, Stevenson twice, and Kennedy), a Republican twice (Willkie in 1940, Dewey in 1948); endorsed no candidate in 1944.

The Milwaukee Journal richly earns its title as an independent newspaper. In one election, it supported candidates from four political parties (Socialist, Democrat, Republican and Progressive). When one of Milwaukee's beer barons asked the paper to go light on his May-December marriage to his secretary, the Journal splashed the story over a full page. Leading Wisconsin liberals damn the Journal as too conservative; to Wisconsin's late U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy, the paper was "the Milwaukee edition of The Worker." It is so sternly dedicated to the letter of the law that it crusades against church bingo and refuses to publish the results of horse races. "We must have freedom, freedom, freedom, so the Journal can act entirely as it sees best for the community," said the late Publisher Harry Grant, and this principle is the paper's guide. It has helped bring the city everything from a big-league baseball franchise (the Braves) to a $327,000,000 expressway. Milwaukeeans do not always follow the Journal's advice, but they invariably respect it. "Milwaukee couldn't do without the Journal," says Editor Lindsay Hoben, and then he completes the equation: "The Journal couldn't do without Milwaukee."

Minneapolis Morning tribune

We want the papers to be educational, not pedantic or in the manner of textbooks, but in sensing ahead of the public the things of coming significance.

--John Cowles, Jr.

Circulation 211,000 mornings. 655,000 Sundays. Independent. Has supported Republicans for President since 1932.

Few papers work harder than the Minneapolis Tribune at expanding the boundaries of reader interest. A Tribune suggestion in 1960 caught the eye of Minnesota's U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey, who took it to Washington--where John F. Kennedy put it into effect as the Peace Corps. The Tribune's able science reporter, Victor Cohn, produced a farsighted series on Russian science in 1951--six years before Sputnik. For 24 years, the paper has been urging its readers away from Midwestern isolationism with a world-consciousness that is the projection of globetrotting Publisher John Cowles. He yielded leadership to his son John Jr., 34, in 1960, and young Cowles seems more than competent to keep the paper where it likes to be: a step or two ahead of the whole state. Indeed, the Tribune continues to serve as a Minnesota model for good journalism. Says Publisher. Vernon Vance of the Worthington Daily Globe: "Local dailies have had to raise their standards to stay in business."

DAILY NEWS

This paper's run for the readers, and we don't give a hoot in hell whether it pleases other newspapers or editors or makes them sick. We're for the general public, its likes and dislikes, its peeves and aspirations.

--Daily News Editorial

Circulation 211,000 mornings. 655,000 Sundays. Independent. Supported Roosevelt for three terms; has since endorsed Republican candidates for President.

Captain Joseph Medill Patterson, founder of the New York Daily News, had a sure instinct for the reading tastes of subway riders (he was one), and he built his tabloid into the biggest and most prosperous daily in the U.S. Some detractors say the News got there by peddling only the most marketable wares--crime, sex, sob stuff and baby pictures--with professional skill. But even the sober New York Times could take lessons from the News's equally professional ability to cut the "important but dull" story down to size. The News reader gets just about everything in the lively, abbreviated style suitable to someone being jolted underground from The Bronx to midtown. The Times and other papers might well take further lessons from News editorials, which are usually short, sometimes outrageous, but always understandable. The News's editorial page pulls a thumping 60% of its readers--well above the national average--by offering some of the liveliest reading fare in the country. When not venting its spleen on its favorite villain ("Killer Khrushchev," "the butcher of Hungary and Ukraine," "Red Hitler"), the News indulges its own peeves, such as the United Nations ("throw the bums out"), or directs a fervent plea to American ingenuity to solve a serious technical problem: how to keep small boys' trousers zippered all the way up. Joe Patterson is dead. But in handpicked successors such as News President Francis M. Flynn, the captain made sure that his irrepressible and incorrigible tabloid would go on appealing to the largest crowd in the U.S.

The New York Times

It will be my earnest aim that the Times give the news, all the news, in concise and attractive form . . . impartially, without fear or favor; to make the columns of the Times a forum for the consideration of all public questions of public importance.

--Adolph Ochs

Circulation 776,000 mornings. 1,400,000 Sundays. Independent. Since 1932 has supported a Democrat for President four times (Roosevelt in 1932, 1936, and 1944, Kennedy), a Republican four times (Willkie, Dewey in 1948, Eisenhower twice).

Rarely within contemporary memory has the New York Times honored Adolph Ochs's promise to be concise. Each weekday, the Times prints five times the wordage of the New Testament; its Sunday editions regularly exceed four pounds and 450 pages. This daily avalanche of newsprint contains so much of value, is so exhaustive and, for the most part, so dependable a diary of the world's doings that the Times probably rates the high compliment so often paid to it: no one can skip the awesome task of reading the Times and feel truly informed. In some foreign countries, the Times is thought of as Washington's unofficial voice--and often it is just that. Presidents and Cabinet members leak stories to the Times that they want in public circulation, usually as trial balloons. Last year, Brazil's President Joao Goulart was aghast to learn that the Times had been silenced (along with other Manhattan dailies) by a strike. How then, complained Goulart, would anyone ever know that he had just won a smashing victory at the polls? As the U.S.'s only newspaper of record, the Times publishes the full text of every historically important document and speech; in the case of the official U.S. report on the Yalta Conference, discharging its obligation to history took the Times a special section and 200,000 words. Perhaps moved by the same leave-nothing-out spirit, the Times betrays a tendency to run on too long on less significant affairs. Rare is the day, for example, when all the Page One stories do not run over into the inside pages--or, as one weary reader put it, "into infinity." The overweight Times and its giant corps of newsmen seem to take the position that it is up to the reader to edit the paper. "All the News" is there, says the Times in effect. "Now find it."

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

An institution that should always fight for progress and reform, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

--Joseph Pulitzer

Circulation 356,000 evenings. 589,000 Sundays. Independent-Democrat. With two exceptions (Landon in 1936, Dewey in 1948), has supported Democrats for President since 1932.

During the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's first three years of life, the bellicose spirit of Joseph Pulitzer, its proprietor, generated 17 libel suits. Pulitzer, who paid a paltry total of $50 in damages, considered the sum a more than reasonable price for the privilege of leading his paper into battle wherever a good cause needed a champion. Pulitzer was fortunate, too, in his choice of generals. As city editor and later managing editor, from 1900 to 1938 the legendary O.K. Bovard cemented the paper's reputation as U.S. journalism's most dauntless crusader. It was the Post-Dispatch that in the 1920s ran to ground the infamous Birger Gang. The Post-Dispatch removed the lid from Washington's unsavory Teapot Dome scandal in 1922; in the 1950s it exposed corruption in the U.S. Bureau of Internal Revenue--and reaped the satisfaction of seeing James P. Finnegan, the bureau's collector in St. Louis, sent to prison. In 1947, suspicious St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporters stayed on the Centralia, Ill., mine disaster story after the last victim had been buried and everyone else had gone home. Their vigilance produced a dramatic series proving that Illinois mine owners had neglected safety conditions in order to meet payoffs to the state department of mines. The paper's present publisher, Joseph Pulitzer III, is not the aggressive journalist his grandfather was, nor does his paper spoil so often now for a rousing good scrap. But its foreign coverage still ranks among the best, and Managing Editor Arthur Bertelson says that the Post-Dispatch is such a "well-oiled machine it can operate almost on its own impetus."

The Washington Post

We try to reach the lady's maid as well as the lady.

--Editor James Russell Wiggins

Circulation 422,000 mornings. 510,000 Sundays. Independent by declaration, but Democrat in practice. By policy, does not endorse presidential candidates, has done so only once since 1932: in 1952, it supported Eisenhower.

Washington imposes severe working conditions on its newspapers. The only industry to speak of is the Federal Government--which does not advertise. To snare what ad accounts there are--mostly from local merchants and department stores--a daily in the nation's capital must appeal to a broad readership: the lady and her maid, the U.S. Senator as well as the unknown worker in Washington's vast army of civil servants. While he lived, Washington Post Publisher Philip Graham liked to describe the Post as "an egalitarian paper." The description fits. The Post says that it carries more comic strips than any other newspaper in the U.S., but for Washington officialdom, the Post also runs the most carefully wrought--and the most widely read--editorials in the nation's capital. In all branches and at all levels of Government, it is regarded as compulsory reading; one Post survey showed a near-saturation circulation in both houses of Congress and among 812 executives at the top of U.S. federal agencies. The paper's letters column, opposite the editorials, bristles with the names of Cabinet members, foreign diplomats and U.S. Supreme Court Justices. Graham also said of the Post that it was "a good paper that needs a lot of improvement." That description fits too. Its Washington coverage is often superior, and farseeing. It exposed and then led the fight against Franklin Roosevelt's Supreme Court-packing bill. Concerned by the rising gangster influence on U.S. politics, Phil Graham handed U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver the idea for a congressional investigation. A Post editorial campaign helped assure civilian control of the Atomic Energy Commission. Measuring the paper's direct impact on Government, the late Lord Northcliffe, publisher of the London Daily Mail and other papers, once said: "Of all the American papers, I would prefer to own the Washington Post."

* If that was where Gibson was going with the Herald, he never got there. The paper was sold in 1863, and disappeared.

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