The P-D Takes Over

Managing Editor Norman Isaacs of the St. Louis Star-Times hurried down to his office ahead of nearly everyone else one morning last week. As his staffers drifted in, he called them into his office to break the surprising news he had heard only the afternoon before. Then he sat down and wrote the news for Page One, took the story to the composing room himself. Composing Room Superintendent Earl Barker read it and gasped: the Star-Times had been sold to the rival Post-Dispatch (circ. 290,052), would publish no more after that afternoon's press run.

Post-Dispatch Publisher Joseph Pulitzer had bought the Star-Times's name, linotypes, presses, newsprint and circulation (179,803) to gain a monopoly in the afternoon field, leave St. Louis with only one other daily newspaper, the thriving morning Globe-Democrat (circ. 282,611). Reported price: between $3,500,000 and $8,000,000. The downtown five-story Star-Times building was not included in the deal; neither was the paper's ABC radio outlet, KXOK, or its FM affiliate. Star-Times Publisher Elzey Roberts had sold out because "material costs have risen faster than the increased revenues necessary to meet them."

The city room grapevine had carried no warnings of the sale. From outward appearances the Star's position had not been precarious. It had made money since 1932, despite rising costs, had carved out its own niche in St. Louis. Its small but spring-legged editorial staff took an underdog's delight in occasionally beating the P-D on stories. Like the Post-Dispatch, it generally followed a Fair Deal line, and like the Post-Dispatch, it had its unpredictable lapses, e.g., both supported Dewey in '48.

Publisher Roberts himself, more a business office man than a journalist, had seemed determined to stay in business. He had inherited control of the old Star from his father, John C. Roberts, one of the founders of International Shoe Co., had combined the Star with the St. Louis Times in 1932. A few months ago he began planning to enter the Saturday-Sunday field next October; he had just hired the Nation's Washington correspondent, Willard Shelton, as his chief editorial writer. A new copy-desk man was on the way from Binghamton, N.Y., and another had just reported for duty.

What prompted Roberts to get together with Pulitzer three weeks ago was the fact that newsprint was going up $10 a ton (TIME, June 18). Roberts' plan for the new Saturday-Sunday edition--aimed, newsmen suspected, at bluffing the morning Globe-Democrat into merging production facilities with the Star-Times --was not working out. Said Roberts: "As a businessman, I've given 36 years of my life to this business. But I'll be 60 next March, and I don't intend to go broke gracefully." The outlook for almost 600 Star employees, including 100 editorial staffers, was dark. Some of them grumbled that Roberts should have found a buyer who would keep the paper going. The P-D promised to hire "some, but not many"; the rest would leave with severance pay.

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