The Press: Working Journalist

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The Important Date. In due time, Howard was elevated to full command of the Scripps organization, displacing in 1922 Scripps's first partner, Milton McRae, in the name of the chain. After Scripps died in 1926, the chain changed too. The pro-Democrat, pro-labor views of Edward Wyllis Scripps gave way to moderate Republicanism, although in 1932 and 1936 Howard swung the newspaper chain behind Franklin Roosevelt. Until this Goldwater year, Roosevelt was the last Democratic presidential candidate the chain endorsed; the mainstream Republican tone was maintained by editorials sent out from New York headquarters.

Thanks in large part to Howard, Scripps-Howard is in excellent shape to survive his departure. Sound business management and the delegation of considerable authority to editors have maintained the 86-year-old organization as the most enduring and successful group of newspapers in the U.S. The U.P., having absorbed Hearst's International News Service in 1958 to be come U.P.I., is larger and stronger than ever. And to his son Jack, 54, who succeeded him in 1953 as president, Roy Howard bequeathed the kind of working newsman's creed that he himself followed all his life: "No date on the calendar is as important as tomorrow."