A Tough Customer

Justly famed as one of the few truly distinguished U.S. newspapers, the evening St. Louis Post-Dispatch has long paraded across its local press landscape with its nose held high in the air, hardly deigning to admit that its competition even existed. But no longer. As of now, the liberal, articulate P-D is engaged in a circulation fight and it is throwing men, money and even Tangle Town puzzles into the struggle. Concedes Post-Dispatch Business Manager Fred Rowden: "It may not be appealing, but you have to get down and meet the competition on his own level. I've got to admit they're a tough customer."

The tough customer is the 108-year-old St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Only five years ago, the morning Globe was at death's door. Its makeup was sloppy; its local coverage was dull and spotty. The lace-kerchief editorial page was dubbed even by staffers as "the old lady." In 1955, Chain Publisher Samuel I. Newhouse bought the Globe-Democrat for $6,250,-000 and set about saving it.

Forever Amberg. The man Newhouse picked to rescue the Globe from its spiritual and economic depression had already accomplished a similar transformation on another Newhouse property, the Syracuse Post-Standard. He is Richard Hiller Amberg, now 48, a grey-haired, hip-shooting combination of businessman, newsman and club-joining civic promoter. On the Globe, Amberg cut production costs, tidied the makeup, concentrated on suburban and local coverage that the internationally minded P-D had begun to neglect, and launched a spate of civic campaigns for better hospitals, better airline service, better traffic safety, and better everything else that would make his newspaper sell better.

It was on the editorial page that the Amberg stamp was most heavily seen: the Globe-Democrat now stands foursquare behind conservatives ranging from General Douglas MacArthur to Guy Lombardo. And as a Boy Scoutmaster, Amberg can always find room for a moving editorial about, for example, small boys killed by lightning while selling Boy Scout circus tickets ("Certainly there must be an es- pecial place reserved in Heaven for faithful little boys . . ."). As an old St. Louis newsman puts it: "Amberg is a bore, but he's a driving bore."

No Post Haste. In the past five years the Globe's daily circulation has gone from 288,085 to 325,832, while the P-D has dropped slightly from 397,531 to 396,212. Only in the lush Sunday field has the P-D increased its already huge lead. The Post-Dispatch also holds to its 2-to-1 lead in paid advertising, but the Globe for the first time in years is making money and the P-D is feeling the goad of competition.

If the Globe is a reflection of its publisher's aggressiveness, the Post-Dispatch is a mirror of its own, far different publisher. Joseph Pulitzer Jr., 47, is a gentle, high-minded fellow who feels infinitely more at home in an art gallery than in a city room. He has sometimes been heard to remark at dinner parties that he doesn't really like his job except for his part in supervising the P-D's cultural articles, which he ponders in an office graced by a Rodin bust of his legendary grandfather, the founder of the P-D and of the old New York World. In the face of the stiff competition from the Globe, the city editor of the Post has lately been laboring longer over weekly "beat sheets" he sends to Pulitzer scores by which the Post theoretically scooped its rival on local stories. It is symptomatic of the Post-Dispatch's present attitude that in the weeks preceding a U.S. presidential election, its managing editor has been vacationing in Hawaii.

Trigger Happy. As so often happens in bitter circulation battles, both papers have become trigger happy in their coverage and comments on the news. Back in February, the P-D needlessly trumpeted an "expose" of a respected businessman who had been jailed 35 years ago but who had led a blameless life ever since.

More recently, the Globe fell for a story told by a white woman who said she had been raped by three Negroes. With racist overtones, the Globe described the situation as being "as bad as the Congo." And then the woman's story turned out to be a hoax. The Post-Dispatch smugly editorialized: "A newspaper that will exploit public emotions over such a case in the hope of selling a few papers is beneath contempt." Last month, while Amberg was spending a Sunday morning in his Norman-style suburban home, he became so incensed about the fact that faculty members of St. Louis' Washington University had signed a petition on behalf of Chemist Linus Pauling ("a bunch of left-wingers") that he fired off an enraged editorial and sent it to the office by taxicab.

Washington University Physicist Edward U. Condon, singled out by Amberg for having dared to back Pauling, protested to the Globe and threatened libel action. So did Pauling. Both complaints were published, along with a halfhearted acknowledgment of "completely unintentional" inaccuracies in the editorial.

Survival of the Fittest. Despite the Globe's circulation inroads and the P-D's belated concern, the Globe has a long row to hoe before it catches up with the Post-Dispatch as a newspaper. Amberg has brought many improvements to the Globe-Democrat; yet the P-D remains more thoughtfully written and edited, has much superior Washington and foreign coverage. Says one Post-Dispatchman: 'We're harder to read, we're long as hell, and sometimes we're not as bright as we should be. But a serious reader has to see the Post-Dispatch to know what's going on." True enough, but an old Globeman is equally correct in saying: "This is a brutal fight. The Globe is moving up fast. Amberg's hungry. The P-D's still a hell of a paper, but not like it used to be. Pulitzer's not hungry and never has been."

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