The Voice of Buffalo

The city room, tidy and peaceful as any library, is free of the crumpled balls of copy paper and other litter usually found around working newsmen. No smoke hangs blue above the desks; by executive order in the interest of "increased efficiency," smoking is prohibited. To make phone calls, most reporters retire to soundproofed glass booths along the wall; when they want a copy boy, they do not shout, but press a buzzer button. The big room has an almost palpable serenity, helped along by the sight of the old-fashioned dust jackets worn by some of the copyreaders.

Upon this scene, every midmorning, arrives the Buffalo Evening News's editor, Alfred Henry Kirchhofer--an austere, bony-cheeked man of 67 in rimless glasses and a dark blue suit. He looks much like Woodrow Wilson, a resemblance not fancied by Kirchhofer, who, like his paper, is a lifelong, rootstock Republican. Two feet six inches away from Kirchhofer's desk a visitor's chair is bolted to the floor; that is as close as Kirchhofer wants anyone to approach. Before long a flurry of blue memos pours from his desk to every department. Sensing the news possibilities in some current local development, Kirchhofer hands out the assignment. "I can't put my hands on the fish," he says, "but the smell is there." By two o'clock, with the help of 190 respectful and sometimes awe-struck editorial staffers, Editor Kirchhofer has produced an other issue of the newspaper that is as much a part of Buffalo as its 400,000 city-owned trees.

Local in Flavor. The Buffalo News is a big (circ. 285,206), powerful and prosperous example of the U.S. provincial daily, whose voice rings commandingly at home but is rarely heard outside. The News's province embraces eight upstate New York counties, of which Buffalo (pop. 607,000), Erie County seat, is the industrial core. To the 1,642,500 inhabitants of its territory, the News speaks loudly of things they want to hear.

The paper is intensely local in flavor; it devotes nearly as much space to domestic news as it does to national news. One of its most popular features is a three-to four-column chronicle of Buffalo items, headed "Daily News Summary" and set in eye-straining agate type. Here the News reports birth, traffic mishap, burglary, blaze, marriage license, missing person, court judgment, bankruptcy and stolen car. Deaths, society notices, club meetings and high school athletic contests get more generous shares of space.

The city's brawling political affairs, in which dozens of factions spiritedly divide along party, ethnic and religious lines, are covered with the thoroughness of a paper whose editor believes that "politics and government turn out to be our job." The News's Republicanism, usually confined to the editorial page, gives local Democrats the conniptions. Just last month Mayor Frank A. Sedita, a Democrat, went on television to bewail what he considered lopsided News coverage of his office. But between swipes at the paper, the mayor reads it attentively, takes all but two of the seven daily editions, and in cooler moments has been heard to say that "the news pages have been fair to my administration."

The News has been Republican ever since its establishment 79 years ago by Edward H. Butler, a Scranton, Pa. newsman. Butler did help one Democratic mayor of Buffalo, Grover Cleveland, become President of the U.S., but this was hardly more than a burst of local pride. After Cleveland took office in 1885, the News picked a quarrel with him, has not since supported a Democrat for either Governor or President.

By sensibly concentrating on homegrown news, Butler handily survived the killing competitions of early 20th century journalism. Buffalo has put as many as twelve dailies in the field, including three in German and two in Polish. The only survivors are the News, in the afternoon, and the morning Courier-Express, which publishes the city's only Sunday paper, but has only about half the daily circulation of the News.

Like a Toothbrush. The News has remained in the hands of Butler's heirs, but Alfred Henry Kirchhofer runs it. Buffalo-born, a trained-on-the-job newsman who did not go to college, Kirchhofer started on the News in 1915 as church reporter, worked 12 to 18 hours a day in his course to the top. When Founder Butler's son, Edward Jr., died in 1956, Kirchhofer, then managing editor, took full charge. On the News's masthead his name stands above that of Publisher James H. Righter, a Butler son-in-law.

Unbending and unflamboyant. Kirchhofer keeps his staff loyal and happy by paying handsome salaries: 25 Newsmen make more than $10,000 a year. The News style book, largely drafted by Kirchhofer and cast in his own stern image, warns staffers that "motherhood is treated as an institution, not as a situation comedy," advises them to "avoid mention of hideous creatures or gruesome circumstances." For years the paper fastidiously designated rats as "rodents." Says Kirchhofer stiffly: "We don't use 'rat' on Page One unless it bit Eisenhower or he bit it."

Kirchhofer is as much a municipal fixture as his newspaper. He lives quietly with his wife in a modest two-story home on Hallam Road, bordering on the city's most fashionable neighborhood. By nature aloof, he likes to putter around his garden, has been seen standing moodily alone, in topcoat and straw hat, on a summer beach. But Kirchhofer is a vigorous swimmer in the main currents of city life: he is a trustee of the Community Chest, a board member of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy and the University of Buffalo, and belongs to both the Buffalo Country Club and the Cult of the White Buffalo, an order dedicated to making Buffalo "a better place to live in."

In fulfilling its mission, the News has become an ingrained Buffalo habit that grew with the city and faithfully reflects its image: solid, conservative, industrious, and, at first glance, colorless. "It looks like a dull sheet." says a former city editor under Kirchhofer, now in Manhattan. "But after you've been in Buffalo a few weeks, you find you can't do without it. You miss it like a toothbrush if you don't see it every day."

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