The Press: Deal in Denver

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Despite an impressive contingent of crack newsmen—among them Damon Runyon, Courtney Ryley Cooper, Burns Mantle and Gene Fowler—the paper read like a circus flyer. For an editorial page, Tammen and Bonfils substituted invective, raked up so much scandal—a good deal of it true—that they kept a loaded shotgun in their office to discourage reader complaints. As the Post grew in power and prosperity, its proprietors branched into other fields; the Post became the first and last U.S. daily ever to own a circus (Sells-Floto), run a burlesque house and sell coal.

Such journalism was inimitable. But after Bonfils' death in 1933, the Post began to resort to the all-too-imitable. In 1946, Bonfils' heirs hired a new editor, Edwin Palmer Hoyt, from the Portland Oregonian, where he had risen in twelve years from the copy desk to publisher. Sweeping out vestigial traces of the circus makeup, Hoyt gave the Post its first real editorial page, completed the Post's conversion into a sober, dependable and stodgy newspaper.

Irresistible Offer. Bonfils and Tammen had scattered their estates among a handful of bank-administered trusts and Bonfils' two daughters, Helen and May. Lacking effective leadership, the Post, which had netted more than $1,000,000 a year under Tammen and Bonfils, fell on lean times; of late it has been paying stockholders—Bonfils' daughters and the bank trusts—less than a 3% return. This combination—low yield, diversified ownership —is just the situation that Newhouse likes to exploit. He has had an eye on the Post for five years, but paid his first visit to Denver only two weeks ago. As usual, Newhouse's offer was made in cold cash. He offered $240 a share—a total of $3,600,000—for the 15% block held by Bonfils' daughter May—now Mrs. Charles E. Stanton—an offer that Mrs. Stanton and her husband, a Denver interior decorator, found irresistible.

The transaction caught the Post itself by surprise: it was scooped on the story by the rival Rocky Mountain News. Other Post stockholders leagued to announce that Newhouse's 15% invasion was as far as he would be allowed to go. "No further sales are contemplated," said Helen Bonfils Davis firmly. "Not under any circumstances." But Newhouse had no ear for such talk. He had every reason to think that before long he would own a majority interest in the Post.