Captured in Decapitating Detail

A new game: pin the head on the Hearst editor

With its rich history and secretive ways, the Hearst Corp. has long been an object of fascination for other journalists. But because the company is privately held and does not issue annual reports, Hearst watching is a little like Kremlinology: a close reading of signs and portents is required to figure who is up and who is down. Lately there has been a lot of figuring to do. Since December 1980, six editors of Hearst's largest newspapers have taken their heady talents elsewhere—though now it seems that some have left their bodies behind.

A photograph of the Hearst editors published in a new company brochure limns the chain's recent history in decapitating detail. "When I saw that picture," says one current editor, "I thought to myself: there's something funny about Harry." Indeed there is. The head of Harry Rosenfeld of the Albany Times-Union sits atop the body of Reg Murphy, former editor of the San Francisco Examiner. Says James Bellows, who is still in the picture despite leaving the Los Angeles Herald Examiner last November: "Harry is wondering where his body is. He thinks [David] Halvorsen might have it."

Taken during the summer of 1980, the Hearst team picture is a composite of some of the men who posed for it, plus the bodies of others who later left the troubled chain, with the faces of replacements pasted on. William Asbury, editor until last June of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, has disappeared from the picture entirely, along with any mention of his paper. So has former San Antonio Light Editor Bob Page. His successor, Ted Warmbold, who is 6 ft. tall, was disappointed to find his head attached to an unidentified 5 ft. frame. "And I thought I had Reg Murphy's body."

When Jon Katz replaced Ron Martin at the Baltimore News-American, Hearst officials summoned him to New York to pose exactly as Martin had. "But I guess they thought it was easier just to paste my head on," Katz says, flattered by the result. Katz, all 195 Ibs. of him, has since fled to the Dallas Times Herald.

Hearstologists are most intrigued by the positioning of Boston Herald American Editor Don Forst. Originally, he was on the far left, and colleagues ribbed him that it was because his paper was about to fold. But in the doctored version, Forst is in a more central and seemingly secure position. Maybe things are not so grim in Boston after all.