An Independent Steps Aside

As the undisputed boss of the World-Herald, Omaha's only daily (circ. 254,467), Henry Doorly has long had a bedrock maxim for publishing his paper. "You can't look for popularity, if you're an independent paper," says he, "because you're constantly stepping on someone's toes. When you're alone it's doubly difficult to please everyone."

A severe, conservatively dressed and conservative-minded publisher, Doorly has never been guilty of trying to please everyone, but he has reached many. In Omaha the World-Herald goes to almost every home in the city; across Nebraska, three out of five families take it. For the past 15 years the paper has not supported a single Democrat for state or federal office, and Nebraskans have elected only two. The paper packs an even greater non-political punch. After a World-Herald crusade for traffic safety in 1953, the state's death toll dropped 30% in four months, while surrounding states' tolls continued to rise. Even the paper's enemies (and it has quite a few) know it is a power to be reckoned with. Says one state Democrat grudgingly: "It does cover everything."

Dollars & Items. The man responsible for the paper's commanding power is Doorly himself. He has left his indelible imprint on the World-Herald since the day he arrived 52 years ago. Born in Barbados, he went to Omaha as a Union Pacific draftsman and married Margaret

Hitchcock, daughter of the paper's founder. Democratic U.S. Senator Gilbert M. Hitchcock. He started out as a $25-a-week reporter (and got a $2.50 raise when he married the boss's daughter); he quickly switched to the classified-ad department when he found that "I was not so hot as a reporter." Doorly moved up on the business side, put the World-Herald solidly in the black (and on the Republican side) and made it one of the most profitable, strongly entrenched dailies in the country. In 1928 William Randolph Hearst took over the Omaha Bee-News, challenged Doorly, and took a sound whipping. In less than ten years Hearst had to sell out to Doorly, after having put more than $6,000,000 into the fight.

Doorly built the World-Herald by watching the paper's news coverage as closely as he watched its finances. To enforce brevity and variety, he ordered an "Item Count" every day, totting up the number of stories in each news category (i.e., local news, society, international, etc.), made the staff produce as many as 450 separate news stories a day. If a close personal friend or a big advertiser got in the way of one of the paper's local crusades, Doorly had no compunction about running him over. When he decided in 1939 that the New York-controlled Nebraska Power Co. should be a locally owned public utility, he broke with some of his biggest advertisers and closest friends, and won his goal.

Funds & Loans. Few World-Herald staffers knew the boss well, but many of them realized that he was not as cold as his enemies thought he was. He was always launching campaigns to raise money for people in need; many a staffer who wanted to buy a house or pay a hospital bill got a generous, open-end loan from the paper with the personal approval of "H. D." To maintain his fierce independence. Doorly took little part in organizations, but launched many of his own civic betterment plans. After World War II, he conceived and pushed through a city improvement plan that gave Omaha a new auditorium and better streets, more fire stations and many other improvements.

A fortnight ago in his modest home on Omaha's Elmwood Road, Henry Doorly, 75, had a heart attack and was ordered to the hospital. At home again in a few days, he called the paper, ordered a campaign to raise money for the victims of the Northeast floods. Then last week he announced his resignation as president of Omaha's World Publishing Co. and stepped aside to a much less active role as chairman of the board. Doorly's son-in-law, Ben H. Cowdery, 46, is publisher of the paper, but Doorly handed the presidency to Editor Walter E. Christenson, 56, who has been with the World-Herald since 1928 and has risen on the editorial side. An able, shirtsleeves newspaperman and a staunch conservative, Christenson is expected to continue in Doorly's tradition.

But World-Herald staffers and other Nebraskans know that there are not many of Doorly's breed left. Said one of his daughters, Mrs. Katherine Doorly Young: "I think there aren't going to be any more like him [in these] days of making friends and influencing people."

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