Merger in Richmond

Last week, after nearly 26 years, Richmond's newspaper history completed a full circle. Negotiations were afoot to bring the Times-Dispatch and the News Leader under one management, as they were in 1914 when the Bryans owned them.

The Bryan family moved up to Virginia from Georgia before the Civil War, married well, prospered, got into the newspaper business. When Joseph Bryan died, he left Richmond's morning paper, the Times-Dispatch, to his sons. In 1909 Son John Stewart Bryan bought Richmond's evening paper, the News Leader. Five years later he sold the Times-Dispatch.

The Bryans continued to prosper, branched out into Richmond real estate, put up a private toll bridge across the James.

Slover of Norfolk. Meanwhile, the Times-Dispatch passed into the hands of a Norfolk publisher, Samuel LeRoy Slover. Already owner of the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch, Slover was busily building up a little news empire in Tidewater Virginia. Before long he had the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, a Petersburg paper, radio stations in all three cities.

Like the Bryans, Publisher Slover had other interests--real estate, banks, the Norfolk & Western Railway, the Cavalier Hotel at Virginia Beach. But Richmond was far afield. For a time the Times-Dispatch did not do so well as the News Leader, but in recent years, under Mark Foster Ethridge (now general manager of the Louisville Courier-Journal} and his successor, lean, hawk-nosed John Dana Wise, the Times-Dispatch got back on its feet. Last year, with a circulation of 82,176, it was not far behind the News Leader (87,233).

Bryan of Richmond. Last week, in Richmond, Samuel Slover and John Stewart Bryan jointly announced that they will merge the Times-Dispatch with the News Leader. Although they kept details of the union to themselves, it was no secret among Richmond newsmen that Publisher Bryan will control both papers.

The Bryans planned to consolidate business and mechanical departments, move the Times-Dispatch into the News Leader'?, modern plant uptown. Editorial staffs will stay separate and intact. Didactic, Lee-worshiping Dr. Douglas Southall Freeman (TIME, April 1) will remain as editor of the News Leader. Virginius Dabney presumably will continue as editor of the Times-Dispatch.

Thus, after 26 years, the Times-Dispatch goes back to the Bryans who founded it. Thus, too, Virginia loses its last competitive newspaper city of any size. Like Slover in Norfolk, Carter Glass in Lynchburg, Bryan will control the news in Richmond.

Like all his clan, John Stewart Bryan is tall (6 ft. 3 in.), gregarious, fond of telling dry anecdotes. In his 68 years Publisher Bryan has accumulated many honors: he is president of the College of William & Mary, an overseer of Harvard University, a director of the Southern Railway.

The son of one distinguished Virginia lady, Isobel Lamont Stewart, Bryan married another: Anne Eliza Tennant, daughter of a rich tobacco merchant. John Stewart Bryan Jr. is head of the Bryan real-estate company. Son David Tennant Bryan, now general manager of the News Leader, is his father's probable successor.

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