Publishers: The Collector

"I believe in the hellfire and brim-stone," said Lord Beaverbrook as he tried to engage Fellow Publisher Roy Thomson in a religious discussion. "Well, I'll tell you my idea about that," replied Thomson, who had purchased a newspaper in Edinburgh a few years back. "When I first got to Scotland, a fellow said, 'Are you a Presbyterian?' and I said, 'I am now.' " "Oh my God," groaned Beaverbrook, giving up.

To Beaverbrook, practical, plain-spoken Thomson was a new and alarming enigma in the publishing world. With disarming candor, Thomson always admitted that he was in the newspaper business only for profit. "I buy newspapers to make money to buy more newspapers to make more money," he once announced. "As for editorial content," said the Canadian-born publisher who at 71 owns 128 newspapers and 80 magazines, "that's the stuff you separate the ads with."

Dimes for Tips. In Roy Thomson of Fleet Street, Thomson's first biography, Australian Writer Russell Braddon skillfully retraces the publisher's dedicated pursuit of the dollar. Thomson is not an easy man to write about, but Braddon has made the most of meager information. Myopic but energetic, Thomson went to work at 14 for a rope factory, where he soon exhibited a "passionate devotion to money." He took time off only to marry a red-haired girl named Edna. "One of the best selling jobs I ever done," he commented.

At 24, Thomson decided to become a farmer in Saskatchewan, but the bleak and lonely life sent him scurrying back east. "Goddam, what a fool I am," he berated himself. He turned to selling radios in desolate northern Ontario, then discovered that people heard only static. So he built his own radio station. When the Timmons, Ont., Citizen pressured him to drop a certain news program, Thomson angrily bought out the paper for $6,000. Inadvertently, he had started his publishing empire.

Anxious to improve the paper, Thomson mailed 100 dimes to small town papers around the U.S. and asked for copies. He pored over them for days looking for tips. He began to buy up other small Canadian newspapers, but he insisted that each paper be the only one in town; if it was not, he forced the competition to sell out by cutting ad rates to the bone. He applied the same stringent budget to every paper, keeping tabs even on glue and pencils. But editorially, he left the papers alone. "If any of our editors were to come out against either God or the monarchy, I guess we'd have to do something, but failing that . . ." he shrugged. When he ran for Parliament in Toronto in 1953, some of his own papers did not support him. He lost the election by 2,400 votes.

Dazzled by Color. Everywhere he went, the genial Canadian chilled fellow publishers by eagerly asking "Wanna sell?" At first, they usually said no, but later they often said yeah. When he ran out of papers to buy in Canada, Thomson shifted overseas and bought Edinburgh's venerable Scotsman. He took advertising off the front page and perked up the news coverage. He waded into television, setting up Scotland's first commercial channel. He bought Lord Kemsley's newspaper chain in 1959 and found himself on Fleet Street as the proprietor of the august Sunday Times.