The Press: Family Trouble

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It was always Ted Thackrey's ambition to own a newspaper, and until last week he was close to realizing it.

Journalist Thackrey was executive editor of the New York Post when he married his boss, Publisher Dorothy Backer, in 1943. Four years later, Theodore Olin Thackrey became co-editor, and with Co-Editor Dorothy Thackrey he ran the Post Home News. But the husband & wife team didn't get along very well. During the election, when Ted was for Wallace and Dolly for Dewey, they quarreled publicly in the Post, and privately in their penthouse apartment. The argument did not end with the election, and in January Dolly Thackrey had a heart-to-heart talk with her husband.

At 45, she was tired of the hurly-burly of putting out a daily newspaper; she wanted to quit. Ted still had his ambition, but he seemed to have changed his politics. Dolly Thackrey got the impression that he was no longer a Wallaceite but a "liberal democrat" who would support Truman's Fair Deal program. That was assurance enough for Dolly Thackrey; they made a deal by which Ted could finally own the paper if he made a go of running it right.

Ted moved out of the Thackrey penthouse; Dolly Thackrey moved out of her penthouse office in the Post. As sole editor & publisher, Ted Thackrey had three months to put the paper in the black (it was losing more than $10,000 a week). If he succeeded, he would be allowed to buy his wife out, paying her out of profits.

A Disturbing Sound. Thackrey sliced 43 names off the swollen editorial payroll (250), pared production costs, boosted circulation by 20,000 to a 370,000 high. In three months, the Post started to make money. But as the Post moved into the black, Mrs. Thackrey was increasingly disturbed by the way Thackrey's editorials moved toward the Red line. Instead of being a "liberal democratic" spokesman, the Post was editorially pro-Wallace and anti-Marshall Plan, critical of U.S. policy and sympathetic to Soviet policy. Thackrey spoke at the pro-Soviet Waldorf-Astoria Cultural Conference (TIME, April 4), and printed his own three-column-long speech in the Post.

Last week Owner Dolly lowered the boom on Editor Ted. Said Thackrey: "I was given the choice of supporting the Atlantic pact or resigning. I resigned." What Ted meant was that his estranged wife had fired him. As she resumed the title of publisher, Dolly explained in a Post editorial: "Irreconcilable differences on fundamental questions . . ." (Lamented the Daily Worker: "Mrs. Thackrey purged Mr. Thackrey . . . because he won't say 'yes' to an atomic war with the Soviet Union.")

A Big Sink. Under Publisher Dolly Thackrey and big, white-haired Executive Editor Paul Tierney, 54, the Post would once again be "liberal democratic." It would also have to pay its own way because Mrs. Thackrey had sunk all she could into the paper.