The Press: Victory in Springfield

Publisher Sam Newhouse, 70, finally "bought" Springfield, Mass., last week. It took him six years of tough scrapping to win control of the town's three papers: the morning Union, the afternoon News and the Sunday Republican. But as usual, what Sam Newhouse wanted, Sam eventually got.

Newhouse already owned 14 other papers, plus Condé Nast publications, when he bought a controlling interest in the Springfield papers back in 1960. But voting rights to a large block of stock were not to be his until September 1967. In the meantime that stock was to be voted by the papers' management, which regarded Newhouse as a foreign raider and would not even let him look at the company's books. Newhouse fought back by filing a flock of lawsuits; he charged that the papers' profits were being haphazardly poured into the already swollen employee pension funds. In turn, the newspapers ran stories belittling their boss-to-be.

To Newhouse, the settlement that came at the cost of $4,000,000 will give him a 17-month head start as undisputed owner of his new papers. To Springfield staffers, it now means little, if anything. They are already reconciled to the brash outsider. "We have had a lot of opportunity to talk with employees in other Newhouse operations," says one editor, "and we haven't found anything to get alarmed about."