The Press: No. 14

Newspaper Collector Samuel I. Newhouse knows how to make trouble work for him. In November 1959, the printing-trades unions struck the two daily newspapers in Portland, Ore. They objected to Newhouse’s plan to install automatic plate-casting equipment on Portland’s biggest and strongest paper, the morning Oregonian (circ. 207,837). And they also struck the afternoon Oregon Journal. For the first 160 days of the strike, the two papers published joint editions; since then have been appearing regularly on their own, though the strike has been going on for 21 months. The Journal has been hurt more than the Oregonian. A strikers’ paper called the Reporter has graduated from a weekly to a daily, now claims 54,292 circulation. As the strike continued and the Journal weakened, Sam Newhouse patiently bided his time. Journal circulation fell 40,000 to 148,510.

Last week, by long-distance telephone, Newhouse bought the Journal for $8,000,000 in cash. The acquisition makes him No. 2 press lord in the U.S., one paper ahead of Hearst’s 13 but still behind Scripps-Howard’s 18. A man who gets his journalistic kicks in buying papers and making money from them rather than influencing them, Newhouse intends to leave the Journal’s editorial staff and policy undisturbed. The Journal’s jumbo headquarters on the Willamette River may be sold and its staff moved over to the Oregonian plant several blocks away or to a nearby office building. Eventually, both Portland papers will be printed on the same presses but with separate staffs. Now that he owns both Portland news papers, Newhouse is out shopping for another paper in the East.

By gaining a monopoly in Portland, Sam Newhouse has eased another name from a dwindling list of cities with daily newspaper competition. New score: 60 competitive cities, 1,401 noncompetitive.