Boettiger Baby

Critics of the U.S. press view with alarm the shrinkage in the number of dailies: only 117 U.S. cities still have competing daily newspapers, v. 689 37 years ago. This week the critics could point with pride to Phoenix, Ariz., a monopoly town where competition had now been restored.

The competitors, John and Anna Roosevelt Boettiger, had hit Phoenix 14 months ago on the rebound from Hearst's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which they had operated for eight years in a New Dealing and un-Hearstlike manner (TIME, June 25, 1945).

With their Hearstwhile earnings the Boettigers had bought newsless shopping papers in both Seattle and Phoenix, set out to convert the Arizona paper into a daily. They stepped it up to two issues a week, then three, then six; they built a news staff, took on columns (by Walter Lippmann, Hedda Hopper, Eleanor Roosevelt and daughter Anna).

This week, when they began selling what they used to give away, the Boettigers found 25,000 Phoenicians ready to buy the Boettigers' Arizona Times. They hoped soon to add a wire service. Some Southwest publishers muttered that John must have wangled his Swedish newsprint with help from his mother-in-law, the State Department or both; he insisted that he had done it all himself.

The Boettigers' rival publisher, in a strongly Democratic area, is an Indiana Republican named Eugene C. Pulliam. In the six months since he took over the morning Republic (circ. 62,000) and afternoon Gazette (35,000), his conservative monopoly papers have become more willing to give the other side a hearing in their columns. It cost Gene Pulliam $4,000,000 to get into town; the shoe-stringing Boettigers have so far invested only around $300,000.

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