The Press: Alliance of Necessity

The St. Louis morning Globe-Democrat has been wavering along between the red and the black ever since Publisher Samuel I. Newhouse added it to his chain in 1955 for $6,250,000. Up against the city's other —and dominant—newspaper, the profitable, Democratic evening Post-Dispatch, the Republican Globe managed to gain some ground (the Globe's circulation of 332,823 is up 40,000 from 1955; the Post's 380,495 is down 7,000), but it never could spin into the solid black. Last week, while his paper was shut down by an American Newspaper Guild strike, Sam Newhouse made an unusual deal with the rival P-D that should strengthen the pocketbooks of both papers.

For an undisclosed sum, Newhouse sold the Globe's printing equipment and block-long, six-story building (built in 1931) to the Pulitzer family's Post-Dispatch. The P-D will move bodily out of its smaller quarters (built in 1917, added to in 1941) into the Globe building; the Globe will lease new office space elsewhere. The P-D will print all editions of the Globe on contract, thereby follow the national trend (Chicago, Chattanooga), dictated by rising costs, of using one set of presses to print morning and afternoon papers. The Globe will abandon its Sunday paper, print a Saturday morning weekend edition with Sunday supplements, sell it on Saturday and Sunday for 10¢ v. 20¢ for the Sunday P-D).

Publisher Newhouse said flatly that the Guild's insistence on a guaranteed pension plan forced the deal on the creaking Globe. "We had no choice," he said. "They had a gun at our heads."