Louisville's Gain

In Louisville, Ky. last week, staff members of the Courier-Journal and Times heard news they had been anxiously awaiting. Robert Worth Bingham, U. S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's and owner of the two papers, had found and appointed a successor to onetime General Manager Emanuel Levi, who a month ago departed to take charge of Hearst's Chicago Herald & Examiner (TIME, March 9). New Courier-Journal and Times boss was Mark Foster Ethridge, famed Southern newspaperman. In Richmond, Va., where he had just resigned as publisher of the Times-Dispatch, Mark Ethridge's associates sorrowfully declared that what was Louisville's journalistic gain was Richmond's loss.

Times-Dispatch reporters especially mourned Mr. Ethridge's departure, remembering that when he arrived in Richmond in 1934, one of his first official acts was to raise editorial salaries. Publisher Ethridge further endeared himself to his staff by buying everybody Coca-Colas and encouraging colorful writing. Mr. Ethridge understood reporters because he had been one once himself.

When grey-eyed, Mississippi-born young Mark Ethridge returned from the War to his newshawking job on the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph, he shortly lost all his pay in a crap game and, as a gesture of extreme indigence, showed up for work in his Navy uniform. Such traditional didoes did not impede Mark Ethridge's progress on the paper. Soon he was city editor, later managing editor.

Under Editor Ethridge the Macon Telegraph regained much of its oldtime prestige, became "South Georgia's Bible," and "The Georgia Bombshell." Editor Ethridge loaded his bombshell with many a charge of what in the South was authentic editorial dynamite. He derided the Ku Klux Klan. He came out for Negro rights. He sympathized with poor-white tenant farmers. He lambasted Prohibitionists. He took to task the paternalistic Mill Village system of potent Bibb Manufacturing Co. For such activities Editor Ethridge was tagged an outstanding U. S. Liberal.

In 1933 Editor Ethridge took a trip abroad at the expense of the Oberlaender Trust, a fund to provide German junkets for influential Americans. On his return, he took over the flabby old Washington Post. Six months later he was on his way to Richmond and the Times-Dispatch, soon raised its circulation 10%. Made president & publisher, Mark Ethridge seemed content until the Courier-Journal lured him away with a reputed $25,000 a year.

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