Doctor to Dailies

"A PLAIN STATEMENT OF FACTS"

"Rumors have been circulated--from sources plainly self-interested and unfriendly--that The Oregonian has been sold. Some of the rumor mongers have identified the supposed purchaser variously. Most of them have said that Mr. Hearst is the purchaser. . . . The Oregonian has not been sold. . . . No sale is in negotiation or pending. . . ."

One day last fortnight the venerable Portland Oregonian felt obliged to print the foregoing "plain statement of facts'' in a two-column box on its front page. It may have helped squelch a false rumor, but it could not make the Oregonian's 92.500 readers understand what had happened to their newspaper in the past month. Still dazed were they from that November morning when they saw. for the first time, a picture at the top of Page One. It illustrated not a world calamity but an ordinary sob-story.

Gone from the front page was the customary offering of foreign news, the cartoon, the Washington column. Their place was taken by a slew of local stories, mostly short, and all written with a forced gaiety that would have made the Oregonian's late, great Editor Harvey Scott writhe in angry protest. Headlines were blacker, shallower. Inside were more and bigger pictures than Oregonian readers had ever seen. A banner headline glared across the sports page, and there were awful rumors that one might soon stream across Page One. Crowning horror was a Bible contest, with fat cash prizes and endorsement by local clergymen.

What Oregonian readers did not know was that the eruption of the Oregonian's 84-year-old complexion was due to violent internal disturbances. Viskniskki & Associates were in Portland.

Like the exterminator-man. Col. Guy T. Viskniskki (who hates to see his name misspelled) has an unpleasant occupation which doubtless achieves worthwhile results. Executives call him an efficiency expert. Embittered newshawks call him the ''wrecking crew." Both names displease him, even if they are partially accurate. He doctors ailing newspapers, trimming payrolls with the steely detachment of a surgeon. He is partly bald, fiftyish, looks something like a pelican.

Ink-stained since he was 15, Guy Viskniskki first worked at 25-c- a week for the editor of a smalltown Illinois paper. He attended Swarthmore College, served in the Spanish-American War. In the World War he helped start the A. E. F.'s Stars & Stripes. After eight more years in the newspaper and syndicate business, he landed with Hearst in 1926 as business manager of the Washington Times. Then began his "wrecking crew" fame. From Hearstpaper to Hearstpaper he went, receiving the title of business manager in each place while he worked to change red ink to black. He is credited with the idea of reducing the margins of all Hearst-papers, saving an incalculable amount of newsprint. He outlawed fancy typography, thereby cutting $100,000 a year from composition costs.

No economy was beneath "Visk's" attention. In dismal men's washrooms, waste newsprint would suddenly replace paper towels, and 20-watt bulbs would glow where 50-watt ones shone before. An employe who left the water running longer than necessary would hear about wasting Mr. Hearst's money. By example, Col. Viskniskki would lunch at his desk on crackers & milk, send an office boy back with the bottle to collect the 2-c- deposit. He worked like a dynamo, neither drank nor smoked.

In 1931, soon after Col. William Franklin ("Frank") Knox left the Hearst general managership to buy the Chicago Daily News, he hired Col. Viskniskki as his business manager. They parted company after five months. Col Viskniskki then engaged a handful of able associates, each an expert in some department of a newspaper, went into business for himself. His procedure is to make a thoroughgoing survey of a paper which retains him (fee for Oregonian survey: $10,000), file his report and recommend that he be given full control, usually for a year. Economy is his specialty, but he will spend freely for circulation-building improvements. The uproar of reorganization lasts about three months. After that Col. Viskniskki leaves a man in charge while he and his crew move on to the next patient. Thus he treated the Indianapolis News, the Detroit Free Press (which he reputedly saved $1,000,000 a year). Last autumn he doctored the Los Angeles Times, then went north to the Portland Oregonian. His next operation will be performed in Spokane on the Spokesman-Review. Pacific Coast gossip said he hoped to link the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Portland Oregonian and Seattle Times into a league for collective purchasing, with himself as general overseer.

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