The Captain Takes Command

The sudden and unexpected death of Newsday's hard-driving Editor Alicia Patterson in 1963 left her husband, Captain Harry F. Guggenheim, with a tough problem: Who could be brought in to run the suburban afternoon daily he had founded for his wife? To almost everyone's surprise, the job went to the first person who expressed an interest: Captain Harry himself.

The Captain was already 72 at the time. During his wife's career he had concentrated largely on the business aspects of publishing and left the editorial product almost entirely to her. Aware that he had much to learn, he brought his old friend, former Louisville Courier-Journal Editor Mark Ethridge, out of retirement to become editor of Newsday and teach him the ropes. And by last year, Captain Harry was ready. Ethridge returned to retirement and Newsday's new boss assumed the title of editor as well as president and publisher. Today, at 76, he energetically discharges all three duties. Under his control, the paper's circulation has risen from 370,000 to 415,000; its already bulging advertising has increased 7%.

Sharp Angles. The basic formula for success remains unchanged from Alicia's day: a skillful mix of local, national and foreign coverage, almost always clearly and concisely written. Newsday's reporting of state politics, for example, is consistently more searching than that of the New York City dailies. "A story for this paper has to be angled sharply," explains Executive Editor Alan Hathway. "The morning papers have had a shot at it, television has had a shot at it. We have to assume one of two things: no one has seen the story or read anything; or they have both seen and read about it. Either way we have an extra job to do, and that is depth. In effect, we combine the first-and second-day story."

As a result, the 252 editorial staffers who turn out Newsday are trained on the job in the paper's brisk style. Though Newsday is published just outside New York City, it has hired few experienced reporters from New York publications. "We get our best people from middle-sized papers in middle-sized towns," says Hathway. "Towns like Charlotte, N.C., or Columbus, Ohio, have given us better reporters," adds Managing Editor Bill Mcllwain. "They're a little bit hungrier, and they don't come on like a bunch of old China hands doing you a favor."

Breezy Irreverence. Around Newsday these days, everyone takes his job with a new seriousness. Gone is the breezy irreverence that the staff used to associate with "Miss P," who delighted in twitting Long Island's moneyed aristocracy and even her own advertisers. Advertisers are no more likely to push the Captain around, but neither is he likely to let his editors goad an advertiser into canceling a contract. Though he directs operations with imaginative skill, he is not especially at home in the newsroom, and keeps his distance from his shirtsleeve staff.

A Republican of long standing, the Captain insisted on running his own editorial-page column supporting Richard Nixon for President on the same day that his wife came out editorially for Jack Kennedy. But once he became editor, Guggenheim did not noticeably alter the paper's rather liberal Democratic outlook. He closely supervises the editorial page and writes many editorials himself--and he does not hesitate to criticize a Republican one day, a Democrat the next. Last week Newsday came out for Republican Nelson Rockefeller for New York Governor; a few weeks back, it endorsed Democrat Arthur Levitt for Comptroller.

The paper's columnists, whom Guggenheim has assembled, also embrace a variety of political views. James Kilpatrick is an engaging conservative. On the liberal side are Atlanta Constitution Publisher Ralph McGill and Clayton Fritchey, the former delegate to the

United Nations. The team is rounded out by a pair of provocative columnists whose politics defy pigeonholing: Novelist John Steinbeck and Master Builder Robert Moses.

Coming Competition. In the years before Newsday, the Captain always showed a newsman's keen interest in a wide range of activities. He spent a few youthful years in South America learning the mining business, the source of the Guggenheim family's great wealth. Then he became fascinated with flying, served as a naval aviator in both World Wars. In 1929 he took a plunge into diplomacy by becoming Ambassador to Cuba, spent much of his time prevailing on Dictator Machado y Morales not to murder too many of his political opponents. He has married three times, bred race horses on his 11,000-acre estate, Cain Hoy, in South Carolina, and supervised various family interests, including Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum.

As he embarks late in life on what is virtually a new career, the Captain is learning that newspapering takes far more concentration and time than all his other interests. And this fall he will have to concentrate more than ever on his paper because it faces serious competition for the first time. Cowles Communications, Inc. plans to start a Long Island daily, the Suffolk Sun, in mid-November.

Not that the Captain is very worried. The Sun will publish in less populous Suffolk County and make no home deliveries in Nassau, where Newsday is strongest. Guggenheim has even taken Sun Publisher Gardner Cowles III on a tour of the Newsday plant to show him how a successful suburban paper operates. Even so, the Captain has increased his own Suffolk staff and embarked on a $3,000,000 expansion in Nassau that will enable him to enlarge his paper from 160 pages to 192 early next year and boost circulation to as much as 600,000. Last week he announced a new service for readers: between 3:45 and 11:00 p.m., Newsday will now quote closing stock prices in answer to telephone requests, even though the paper ends its press run before the market closes.

There seems to be no limit in sight to the growth of Long Island, and consequently of Newsday. The Captain only hopes that his paper can help bring some order to the island's spectacular urbanization. "When Newsday was founded," he recalls, "most of the island was a series of independent villages with very little interest in one another's problems." Acting as a kind of Long Island "town meeting," Newsday, the Captain feels, helped knit the communities together; after an energetic Newsday campaign, for example, a bi-county planning agency was established last year. To Captain Harry, Newsday is nothing so much as Long Island's "single common denominator"--a role that is both demanding and profitable.

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