The Kid Brother

In the newspaper empire that John Shively Knight built, the boss's brother, Jim Knight, has played a secondary role. It was the elder (by 15 years) brother Jack who took full charge of the Akron Beacon Journal in 1933 on the death of their father, and led the expansion into four other cities. It was Jack Knight, too, who sold the prosperous Chicago Daily News three months ago to Marshall Field Jr. (TIME, Jan. 19). "All I wanted to do," Jack said then to those who speculated on the imminent dismemberment of the chain, "was relax a little, and give a little bit more to Jim." Last week James Landon Knight, 49, got quite a bit more: for $1,500,000 he bought the Charlotte, N.C. News (circ. 65,508), thereby restoring the Knight group to five papers* and moving to the front page for the first time as the potential successor to the throne.

Victory in Miami. For unassuming, unspectacular Jim Knight, it was an unaccustomed prominence. He has climbed the hard way, by merit, in a family empire where climbing was scarcely necessary. By disposition, he settled on the business side. "Jack isn't any bookkeeper," he said, "and I've always been sort of a tinker." When Jack Knight bought the Miami Herald in 1937, Tinker Jim went down and hammered it into shape. A relentless foe of back-room featherbedding, Jim took on a strike by the powerful International Typographical Union in 1948, kept the paper on the street, set up a nonunion shop, won the battle hands down. (The I.T.U. considers the strike still in effect to this day.) All told, Jim performed so well that Jack put him in overall charge as Miami general manager in 1951. Four years later, Jim Knight took over as publisher of a new Knight property: the fat and venerable Charlotte morning Observer.

In his quiet way, Jim shook the stodgy Observer alive. He dumfounded editorial staffers by showing up mornings at 7, imposed a strict ban on "puff" copy tied to ad accounts--long a news staple of both Charlotte papers--revived the Observer's bureau in Raleigh, the state capital, and added staffers in three Carolina cities. The Observer's gloomy makeup vanished in a wash of white space, new type, and pictures boldly played; its brighter columns carried livelier, shorter stories. Inevitably the Observer, historically dominant, stole further circulation and advertising marches on the News. By last year News Publisher Thomas Lambard Robinson, watching his paper slip below the break-even point, put it on the block, as a last resort offered it to Jim Knight.

Competition in Charlotte. The Knights, wary of complaints about monopoly, were not anxious to gobble up the News and take sole ownership in a town they entered only four years ago. But buying the News made the kind of economic sense that Jim Knight likes to make: fusing the mechanical and business office operations of the two papers will give the ledgers a real lift. As for the editorial side, Jim Knight plans to let each paper keep its individual character, with the News continuing as a folksy, locally oriented, feature-conscious paper, while the Observer moves on a somewhat more serious regional orbit. Jim Knight says he expects the papers to compete on the news side and disagree on the editorial pages.

Observing the kid brother's performance from afar, big brother Jack, 64, nodded approval. "Jim is one of the best newspaper operators in the nation," he said admiringly. "Undoubtedly one day he will succeed me as president."

*Besides the Charlotte News the Knight group includes the Akron Beacon Journal (circ. 163,191), Detroit Free Press (circ. 463,469), Miami Herald (circ. 270,573), and Charlotte Observer (circ. 154,179).

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