Newspapers: Fairness in Phoenix

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A few years back, a joke was making the rounds of Phoenix. Publisher Eugene C. Pulliam asks one of his managing editors: "What did Barry Goldwater say today?" The editor replies: "Nothing." "Fine," says Pulliam. "Put it right on page one, but keep it down to two columns."

Times have changed. Goldwater is very cool to his old friend Pulliam these days. And Pulliam's papers, the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette, have lost their partisan image and greatly improved and broadened their news coverage. This week Pulliam receives the University of Arizona's John Peter Zenger Award* for "distinguished service in support of freedom of the press and the people's right to know." (Among previous recipients: the New York Times's James Reston and Washington Post Editor James Russell Wiggins).

Pulliam's papers, the only two dailies in Phoenix, no longer play up only the conservative view of news and dismiss what is distasteful to them. Now they give equal space to varying shades of opinion. The editorial pages not only support Democratic Senator Carl Hayden as well as Republican Senator Paul Fannin; they also balance liberal columnists, such as Walter Lippmann, against conservatives, such as William Buckley. Morale was once so low that innumerable staffers quit in disgust, and many were fired. Now, Pulliam runs a happy shop. "We are all Pulliam's babies," says one veteran staffer, actually brushing away a tear.

On the Merits. Of the two papers, the morning Republic (circ. 156,000), has changed more dramatically than the afternoon Gazette (100,000). In the last four years, the Republic has boosted its reporting staff from 65 to 100, stationed one reporter in Viet Nam while others roam, the globe. Arizona staffers have delved into such topics as poverty, the new math, smog, pornography, and corruption in the state tax commission. The paper fought successfully to save nearby scenic Camelback Mountain from private developers.

This new look in newspapers is not unique to Phoenix. Papers across the U.S. are no longer reacting to issues in quite so ideological a way; instead, they confront each issue on its own merits.

Still, much of the improvement in the Pulliam papers can be chalked up to Pulliam himself, who has always been portrayed as more of an intransigent conservative than he actually is. At 76, Pulliam is one of those publishers who is a newspaperman first. "Why in hell," he asks, "should a man want to sell newspapers? If I wanted to make money, I'd go into the bond business. I've never been interested in the money we make but in the influence we have."