Arkansas Teetotaler

In a time of corporate, impersonal journalism, doughty old John Netherland Heiskell is a holdout. The lean and gimlet-eyed boss of Little Rock's Arkansas Gazette snorts at the notion that a newspaper is just a 6% investment: it is first of all an institution, says he, and only incidentally a business. Because his paper is a great success in both roles, numerous buyers have greedily eyed it. Heiskell has always talked to them as sternly as if they were asking for the hand of one of his two daughters.

Last week, tired of turning down unsuitable suitors, he took steps to keep "The Old Lady," as Arkansans call the state's biggest and most respected daily, in the family. For around $750,000, he bought the Gazette stock (25%) that was not already held by Heiskells. He also named ex-Army Major Hugh B. Patterson Jr., his capable, 33-year-old son-in-law, as his paper's publisher. (Son Carrick Heiskell, an Army pilot, was killed flying the Hump in World War II.)

All Is Confusion. Not that Editor Heiskell was in any hurry to let go. At 76, he still gets to his office about 8 in the morning. The office, piled high with books and papers, is more cluttered than William Allen White's used to be at another famed Gazette, in Emporia. Once a reporter asked for a typewriter he had seen buried in the office, and Heiskell crustily denied that it was there. A janitor dug in and found not one machine but six. "If they'd dug a little deeper," cracked a newsman, "they'd probably have found a dead reporter."

The Gazette, which began its 130th year last week, was founded by Printer William Woodruff, who ferried his press from Tennessee by canoe. "Mister J.N." Heiskell, who also came from Tennessee, has run it for the last 46 years. He has fought against governors and utilities, and for equal (but separate) opportunities for Negroes. He hates monopoly journalism; the Gazette once bought the rival Democrat, but Heiskell soon got them divorced. He likes to tell fellow Southern publishers that if they don't spend money to get good editorial pages, they shouldn't blame their readers for not reading them. His own editorials (which he reads aloud to make sure they can stand it) get read. All through the 1948 campaign, the Gazette dad-blamed the Dixiecrats, stuck with Truman, "advised" voters to do the same. Arkansas did, by a 60% vote.

A Hearing for Henry. A teetotaler who bars liquor ads (but not beer ads) from his paper, Mister J.N. is a tolerant man. When Henry Wallace came to town during his campaign, Heiskell gave him free time on the Gazette's radio station to make sure that he got a fair hearing. (It was Wallace's own fault that his interview with Executive Editor Harry Ashmore made damning reading in next day's Gazette.)

Heiskell's tolerance also permits a daily column in the staid Gazette by Hardy ("Spider") Rowland, a cigar-chomping, self-confessed sinner who used to run a suburban gambling house. Spider writes about his bouts with "wobble water," refers to young girls as "quails," and brags about his encounters with the law. Spider wrote in a recent column: "I attribute my outstanding ability to kiss to blowing a bugle for a couple of years with the Boy Scouts."

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