Publishers: Survival of the Fittest

Of the some 1,000 publishers who attended the annual American Newspaper Publishers Association meeting in New York last week, the oldest was Edward King Gaylord, 95. Yet he was far from the least active. Characteristically, the Oklahoma City publisher attended almost every session of the four-day affair and found time as well to pay a call on his newspapers' national advertising representative, George Katz, 96. The Oklahoman's only complaint: "In New York, people get to work too late and go home too early."

Back in his beloved Oklahoma City this week, Gaylord is once again getting up early and going home late, a habit of his for the 65 years that he has been a newspaperman. The slight, trim nonagenarian still puts in eight hours at the office six days a week, participating as much as ever in the writing and editing of his papers. Such concentration has made him not only the leading press lord of his state but also its most powerful citizen. In addition to putting out the state's biggest papers, the morning Daily Oklahoman (circ. 190,000) and the afternoon Oklahoma City Times (118,000), his Oklahoma Publishing Co. owns the state's largest TV and radio stations, its largest trucking express service, the Farmer-Stockman (450,000), a monthly reaching farmers throughout the Southwest,

Rx Golf and Travel (196,000), a trade bimonthly, and a string of oil wells.

Industry In, Gamblers Out. Oklahoma City, to a large extent, is Gaylord's personal creation. When he first arrived in 1902, Oklahoma was still five years from statehood, and Oklahoma City was a town of only 10,000, with no particular resources and not much of a future. His papers have been ceaselessly devoted to giving it a future. He has used them to bring in industry and federal grants, to drive out gamblers and prostitutes. He campaigned successfully to transfer the state capital from Guthrie to Oklahoma City; he urged a massive state highway program, and most of those roads lead to

Oklahoma City. Opposed to federal spending in the abstract, he has had no objections to it in Oklahoma. He led the drive to locate Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma near Oklahoma City; the installation has become a community of 30,000 and the state's biggest employer.

Understandably, politicians who want to get anywhere in Oklahoma come hat in hand to Gaylord. The present Republican Governor, Dewey Bartlett, candidly admits that he owes his election in large part to Gaylord's support. Though he has not backed a Democratic presidential candidate since 1932, Gaylord insists on his political independence. "There is little difference between Democrats and Republicans these days," he says. "The real difference is in the candidates' character." He didn't support Barry Goldwater in 1964 because he considered the Senator too inconsistent in his views. But he shares much of Barry's outlook. He has a horror of deficit financing and organized labor; he hews to a hard line abroad. "In Korea, we followed a policy of No Win," he wrote in one of his front-page editorials. "In Viet Nam, we follow a policy of No Fight." To his way of thinking, inaction over the Pueblo is a sign of national decline. "We used to say 'Remember the Maine.' Now we seem to say, 'Forget the Pueblo.' "