Survival of the Fittest

Of the some 1,000 publishers who attended the annual American Newspaper Publishers Association meeting in New York last week, the oldest was Edward King Gaylord, 95. Yet he was far from the least active. Characteristically, the Oklahoma City publisher attended almost every session of the four-day affair and found time as well to pay a call on his newspapers' national advertising representative, George Katz, 96. The Oklahoman's only complaint: "In New York, people get to work too late and go home too early."

Back in his beloved Oklahoma City this week, Gaylord is once again getting up early and going home late, a habit of his for the 65 years that he has been a newspaperman. The slight, trim nonagenarian still puts in eight hours at the office six days a week, participating as much as ever in the writing and editing of his papers. Such concentration has made him not only the leading press lord of his state but also its most powerful citizen. In addition to putting out the state's biggest papers, the morning Daily Oklahoman (circ. 190,000) and the afternoon Oklahoma City Times (118,000), his Oklahoma Publishing Co. owns the state's largest TV and radio stations, its largest trucking express service, the Farmer-Stockman (450,000), a monthly reaching farmers throughout the Southwest,

Rx Golf and Travel (196,000), a trade bimonthly, and a string of oil wells.

Industry In, Gamblers Out. Oklahoma City, to a large extent, is Gaylord's personal creation. When he first arrived in 1902, Oklahoma was still five years from statehood, and Oklahoma City was a town of only 10,000, with no particular resources and not much of a future. His papers have been ceaselessly devoted to giving it a future. He has used them to bring in industry and federal grants, to drive out gamblers and prostitutes. He campaigned successfully to transfer the state capital from Guthrie to Oklahoma City; he urged a massive state highway program, and most of those roads lead to

Oklahoma City. Opposed to federal spending in the abstract, he has had no objections to it in Oklahoma. He led the drive to locate Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma near Oklahoma City; the installation has become a community of 30,000 and the state's biggest employer.

Understandably, politicians who want to get anywhere in Oklahoma come hat in hand to Gaylord. The present Republican Governor, Dewey Bartlett, candidly admits that he owes his election in large part to Gaylord's support. Though he has not backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1932, Gaylord insists on his political independence. "There is little difference between Democrats and Republicans these days," he says. "The real difference is in the candidates' character." He didn't support Barry Goldwater in 1964 because he considered the Senator too inconsistent in his views. But he shares much of Barry's outlook. He has a horror of deficit financing and organized labor; he hews to a hard line abroad. "In Korea, we followed a policy of No Win," he wrote in one of his front-page editorials. "In Viet Nam, we follow a policy of No Fight." To his way of thinking, inaction over the Pueblo is a sign of national decline. "We used to say 'Remember the Maine.' Now we seem to say, 'Forget the Pueblo.' "

He has been just as tough with unions. The few times that they have called a strike against his papers, he has broken the offending unions. Only two are left in his plants today and they are tame. In all its history, the Oklahoman has failed to publish only once--during a six-day wildcat strike in 1919.

Duel at Red River. Gaylord's disputes with his fellow Oklahomans are legendary. When "Alfalfa Bill" Murray ran for Governor in 1930, Gaylord denounced him as a "wildman" and an "unconscionable liar." Once in office, however, Murray won Gaylord's affection by leading a detachment of the National Guard to the Red River to open up a bridge on which Texans had tried to charge tolls. In the 1930s, a millionaire named "Boots" Adams tried to get a city ordinance changed so that he could drill for oil within city limits. Gaylord was enraged that anyone should desecrate his fair city, and said so in his papers. So Boots put out a rival flyer long enough to get the law changed, won that fight; today oil wells dot the city and even stand on the capitol grounds. Gaylord's only present competition stems from a political battle of 1962, when he hotly opposed Real Estate Developer W. P. Bill Atkinson's bid for the governorship. First, Atkinson sued for $10 million libel, then thought better of it and started his own newspaper, the Oklahoma Journal. It lost $1,000,000 the first year, but is now making a small profit with a 70,000 circulation.

Despite his advanced years, Gaylord keeps abreast of the latest technological developments, so much so that he cannot find a science reporter to satisfy him; the post has been vacant for a year. His papers are second to none in automation; in 1963, as a 90th birthday present for the publisher, the papers became the first in the U.S. to set both news and classified columns by computer. The city room is doubtless the only one in the U.S. with wall-to-wall blue carpeting and oak paneling. Staffers are forbidden to bring food or drink to their desks to prevent possible staining.

Still in the pink of health, Gaylord neither drinks nor smokes, walks two miles every day and lifts wooden barbells. He also drives his Lincoln Continental to work, though he has to be chauffeured home because state law prohibits anyone over 85 from driving after sundown. Gaylord shows no signs of slackening his pace. His son Edward, 49, executive vice president of the Oklahoma Publishing Co., is slated to succeed him. But the story making the rounds of the newsroom is that one day the elder Gaylord will summon the younger and break the news to him of the company's mandatory retirement policy at 65. "Eddie," he will say, "your time has come."

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