The Press: Sale of the Times-Herald

The Washington Post (circ. 201,645) and Washington Times-Herald (253,532) were about as unlike as two metropolitan dailies could be: the Post is internationalist and often New Dealish, although it backed Eisenhower; the Times-Herald was isolationist and archconservative, bore unhappily with Ike. But last week the two papers came to complete agreement on one of the biggest newspaper deals in U.S. history. For $8,500,000 the Post's Board Chairman Eugene Meyer, 78, bought the ailing (estimated $500,000 loss last year) Times-Herald from its ailing publisher, Colonel Robert R. (Chicago Tribune) McCormick, 73. The purchase gave the Post a monopoly in the capital's morning field.

A day after the sale, the Post came out bearing its own logotype plus the Times-Herald's. Technically, the purchase more than doubled the Post's old circulation. Actually, it is expected to level off at about 300,000, making it the biggest daily in the city. The Post also began to put out afternoon editions as the Times-Herald had, thus invading a territory held by the rich, successful Evening Star (circ. 234,660) and Scripps-Howard's tabloid News (138,778). Of the Times-Herald's 1,138 employees, more than 500 have been temporarily hired by the Post.

The Changeover. "Bertie" McCormick had good reason to sell. Ever since he bought the T-H for $4,500,000 in 1949 (from seven of the paper's top executives, who had been willed the paper by McCormick's cousin, Cissy Patterson), he has had trouble with it. McCormick transformed it from a racy, sensational, popular daily into a paper much like his Chicago Tribune, to bring "the United States [i.e., the colonel's isolationist view of the world] to Washington."

But the Times-Herald was in deep trouble. Circulation slumped steadily and advertising dropped off. Furthermore, the colonel was having problems with the rich Trib, whose circulation has fallen 17.6% from its 1946 peak. Two months ago, Post Chairman Meyer, who had tried to buy the T-H before, heard that the colonel was fed up with the Times-Herald and dispatched an emissary to McCormick's winter home in Boynton Beach, Fla. to sound him out about selling the paper.

Dissenting Voice. A fortnight ago, Philip Graham, 38, Post publisher and president and Meyer's son-in-law, got a mysterious phone call from a Trib vice president, who said guardedly: "There's a point to our meeting. It's brand-new to me." Phil Graham went out hastily to the airport to meet his father-in-law, returning from a Jamaica vacation, immediately started a series of meetings to buy the paper. Meyer insisted from the beginning that the negotiations be kept a complete secret and that there be no haggling over the price. He offered $8,500,000 (the price McCormick paid for it plus $4,000,000 that had gone into a spanking new T-H annex and equipment).