The Press: Changing Hands

"That thump on the front porch this morning," said Phyllis Wudi, a Milwaukee secretary, "was the nicest sound I've heard for eight weeks." The thump was the Milwaukee Sentinel, appearing again after an eight-week American Newspaper Guild strike. But in reality, Hearst's ailing old Sentinel (circ. 192,167) was no more. During the strike it had been sold for $3.000,000 to its independent rival, the afternoon Journal (372,276)—which promptly rushed its new buy back into print, but dropped the Sunday edition.

Although the strike was the immediate cause of Hearst's selling out, the 125-year-old Sentinel has been moribund for years. To William Randolph Hearst Jr., editor in chief of the Hearst papers, the trouble with the Sentinel was the rival Journal's economic superiority: "There was no need for an advertiser to take another paper. The Sentinel just didn't run enough advertising to make a go of it." Last year, with 16,700,000 ad lines to the Journal's 51,200,000, the Sentinel lost $1,000,000.

There were others who thought the Sentinel's problems were editorial. Described by one staffer as "the Hearst paper that most resembled a paper," the Sentinel tried hard to be one. But under Hearst, who bought the paper in 1924, it lost much of its independence and local voice. At the end it employed not a single fulltime editorial writer, relying instead on canned Hearst editorials sent out from New York; news-side staffers were assigned to write occasional local editorial comment on the side. A few of the striking Guildsmen will get their jobs back, although the Sentinel's new owner has no Guild contract with its own staff. In fact, the Journal is owned by its employees, under a stock-purchase plan set up several years after the death of Journal founder Lucius W. Nieman.