Chicago Blowout

Last week two stubborn men came to the parting of the ways. Out as a Hearst editor went rough, tough Lou Ruppel, ex-captain of Marines (TIME, Jan. 15). He had tried to give Hearst's Chicago Herald American the same rowdy tone he had given the tabloid Chicago Times before the war. But the cold, tired old voice that came over the telephone from San Simeon was not pleased, and out blew Lou.

William Randolph Hearst wants his papers run his way. Instead, Lou Ruppel swung out on his own, started a civic clean-up campaign which blasted Chicago as a "dirty shirt town." The Chief summoned Ruppel, ordered him to tone it down. When Ruppel played up Ernie Pyle's death, he was dressed down for overpublicizing "our rival" (Pyle wrote for Scripps-Howard), even though the rival was dead. And when Ruppel tossed out Hearst's dearly beloved top-of-the-page red headlines, oldtime Hearstling Robert Wiley was rushed to Chicago to "breathe more Hearst into the paper."

Thereafter, though Ruppel was executive editor, he hardly had even the right to hire & fire. (On the old Times, Ruppel once fired a reporter for saying "I think," on the grounds that only Ruppel was paid to think.)

All these humiliations Lou Ruppel bore patiently. He could afford to: his two-year contract (including a $10,000 bonus for signing) totaled $90,000. Last week, with 13 months of Ruppel's contract still to run, Hearst had been unable to humiliate Ruppel into quitting. Hearst finally had to buy him out.

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