Dixie's Best Dailies

The South has long been a land of first-rate newspaper editors and second-rate newspapers. Ralph McGill of the Atlanta Constitution, Josephus and Jonathan Daniels of the Raleigh News and Observer, Harry S. Ashmore of the Arkansas Gazette, Hodding Carter of the Delta Democrat-Times and other Southern editors became more distinguished for the strength of their convictions than the quality of their coverage.

The giants of Southern journalism have largely passed from the scene, but the newspapers of the South are probably better than ever. More and more Dixie dailies are starting to cover national news seriously, commit money and staff to investigative reporting and pay their talent well enough to halt its traditional northward migration. Among prominent defectors: Tom Wicker and Clifton Daniel of the New York Times, David Brinkley of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS. Five Southern newspapers best exemplify the new stirring in Southern journalism. They are, in alphabetical order:

The Charlotte Observer (circ. 169,968), owned by the Knight-Ridder chain, sends four editions across the Carolinas every morning, and more than 60% of its readers live outside Charlotte. Editor C.A. McKnight covers a lot of ground with only 38 reporters, but does not slight long-term investigative projects. One example: Observer reporters spent 21 months digging through expense vouchers at the Southern Bell Telephone Co.; so far, eleven executives have been indicted for cheating the utility. The paper's support of school busing has not pleased many readers, but Editor Reese Cleghorn's sensitive editorials rarely offend. That editorial-page task is left to Doug Marlette, 26, whose tough cartoons are syndicated to 80 dailies. Lately, Executive Editor David Lawrence has invited local businessmen to sit in on editorial meetings. "We're not afraid of criticism," he says. "I want this paper to reflect the ideas of the people who live here."

THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL

(circ. 204,747) loaded its presses onto a railroad car in 1862, and then gave the advancing Yankees hell from all over the South. The hell-raising persists, but the enemy has changed. The paper's 1975 expose of racial discrimination in local apartment complexes led to one of the largest cash settlements in the history of open-housing litigation. This year the Commercial Appeal revealed how Memphis' biggest department store was spying on customers in its dressing rooms, and endorsed a black candidate with a white wife over 15 white opponents for the office of county legislator. "We have no illusions that we are universally loved," admits Editor Michael Grehl, 47. Grehl's New York-based overseers at the Scripps-Howard chain do not seem to mind his growling. One reason may be that the company also owns the evening Press-Scimitar (circ. 111,957) and has a Memphis monopoly. Another is that the Commercial Appeal generally finds room on the front page for such beloved standbys as a recent story of a boy and his lost dog, with a picture of the pair reunited.

THE DALLAS TIMES HERALD (circ. 225,749) was just another tired evening paper when the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Co. bought it in 1970. Then the company brought in former L.B.J. Aide Tom Johnson (no kin), who has raised salaries by 25% in the past three years, upped the editorial staff from 124 to 152, and spent some 61% more on newsgathering than his predecessor. More important, Johnson, 34, gave the Times Herald backbone. For the first time in years, the paper took on the Dallas Chamber of Commerce by opposing its plan to keep tolls on a local turnpike, and last March ticked off 24 local real estate advertisers with a dispiriting account of development along a local lake; they have since yanked their ads.

The Mami Herald (circ. 401,643) ranks among the nation's best newspapers. The pride of the Knight-Ridder chain, the Herald has an editorial staff of some 260 spread over Miami, eight other Florida cities and in Washington. Three Miami-based reporters cover Latin America, to which the paper airlifts 8,500 copies a day. Reporter Gene Miller this year won a Pulitzer Prize, his second, for helping free two men sentenced to death for murder. Executive Editor Larry Jinks and Managing Editor Ron Martin often run three stories on the same subject, side by side, just for completeness. Since last March the paper has published El Miami Herald, a separate Spanish-language edition for Miami's estimated 500,000 expatriate Cubans.

St. Petersburg Times (circ. 188,921) is studded with Phi Beta Kappas, former Rhodes scholars and Nieman fellows and such respected names as former U.P.I. Foreign Editor Wilbur Landrey and former Washington Post Deputy Metro Editor Andrew Barnes. What attracts them? Partly the paper's high pay and profit-sharing plan, but mostly Eugene Patterson. A Pulitzer prizewinning veteran of the Atlanta Constitution and Washington Post, Patterson, 52, came to the Times in 1971 at the behest of Publisher Nelson Poynter, 72. Since Patterson's arrival, circulation has jumped 25%. Perhaps lost as readers are the officials convicted after Times exposes -- including three county commissioners the paper fingered for bribery last year. Patterson insisted that the Times play one crime story as front-page news: the drunk-driving arrest of Eugene Patterson.

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