Newspapers: Farewell Fellow Citizens

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When Raymond Cyrus Hoiles, owner of the Freedom Newspaper chain (TIME, April 19), bought out the Lima, Ohio, News in 1956, his far-right editorial attacks on public schools and libraries, unions, and other Hoiles hates turned the town against him. When ex-News employees and local businessmen started the rival Lima Citizen the next year, 1,000 enthusiastic stockholders put up $360,000 capital. In three months, the new paper reached 24,060 circulation while the News slipped to 15,363. By year's end, the Citizen was ahead in advertising too. "If we can't survive with the help everyone is giving us," said Editor Robert C. Barton, "then we're just poor newspapermen."

They underestimated their enemy. Hoiles, now 85, may be a political crank, but he is also a newspaper pro. And he had a big bankroll to boot. His News snapped up the good comic strips, flooded rural districts with sample copies, cut subscription prices to 25¢ a week, and countered losses by putting out free copies of a shopping guide offered to advertisers at rock-bottom combination rates. Hoiles also strengthened his editorial staff, concentrated on local news, added a Sunday TV supplement. By 1960 the News pulled ahead in circulation and began to get advertisers back. The News still lost as much as $600,000 a year. The Citizen lost less, but could afford it less.

Last week, with the headline FAREWELL FELLOW CITIZENS, the Lima Citizen ceased publication, beaten by financial weakness and its own failure to live up to its early promise of leadership. Hoiles paid just over $1,250,000 for the paper's assets—a price that should clear the Citizen's debts, pay benefits to the 163 employees, fully refund the stockholders' money, and leave a little over to prosecute the Citizen's still-continuing civil antitrust suit against Hoiles claiming $7,800,000 treble damages as a result of his determined competition.