What to Read in the Cow Palace

As the site of a national political convention, San Francisco offers many advantages--which may be why the Republican Party has chosen it twice in eight years. Its precipitous hills produce women long and firm of limb. It abounds with good hotels, fine restaurants and postcard vistas. It also fields three dailies favorably disposed to the Republican cause: Hearst's morning Examiner, the morning Chronicle, and Hearst's evening News Call Bulletin. To this triad must be added a fourth: the Oakland Tribune, published just across the bay by former Republican U.S. Senator William Knowland. But if delegates to next week's convention depend on the four dailies for comprehensive accounts of their activities, they may be disappointed.

Hearty Cheers. Most popular and most successful is the Chronicle. Once a sobersided copy of the New York Times, the paper took a new tack toward entertainment in 1955 under the direction of Executive Editor Scott Newhall and Publisher Charles de Young Thieriot, a descendant of the paper's founders. The two men filled their pages with columnists, both syndicated and local, until the census peaked at 53. Columnists now cover everything from veterinary medicine (Dr. Frank E. Miller) to sex (Count Marco, a local beautician), frequently at the expense of news.

The Chronicle has pledged blanket convention coverage: Count Marco, for example, taking note of the convention site, the Cow Palace, announced plans to examine the herd of delegates and delegates' wives in search of cows. Editorially, the paper greeted Bill Scranton's entry with hearty cheers.

Decent & Dull. Second-ranking daily is the Examiner, which was William Randolph Hearst's pedestal paper, and which still styles itself, somewhat anachronistically, as "Monarch of the Dailies." Having surrendered its circulation lead to the Chronicle in 1961, the Examiner now lags far behind, 293,000 to 330,000, and has lost spirit. Successive waves of new editorial management, all rolling in from Hearst headquarters in New York, seem to have improved nothing but the Examiner's morals: the paper no longer prints cheesecake, and its trucks now proclaim: "Decency--A Family Newspaper." The Examiner's editorial policy is set in New York, where Editor in Chief William Randolph Hearst Jr. has displayed a preference neither for Goldwater nor for Scranton but for Henry Cabot Lodge: "Don't be surprised if many delegates turn to the handsome and experienced politician-diplomat."

Hearst's other San Francisco paper, the evening News Call Bulletin, is a blend of unprofitable competitors. Despite its monopoly of the afternoon field, the News Call Bulletin has slipped in circulation until it is not appreciably larger than the Pacific Coast Edition of the Wall Street Journal. Nevertheless, Editor Thomas Eastham plans to deploy a convention force of 25--some 18 more than the Examiner--by drafting his TV critic, a reporter whose normal assignment is the Parks and Recreation Department, and anyone else at hand.

Little Interest. It is William Knowland's Oakland Tribune that may quite possibly be the most thoroughly read local paper in the Cow Palace. The Tribune gave its heart to Barry Goldwater months before the California Republican primary, and has since published scores of editorials calculated to make pleasant reading for the 700-odd delegates who plan to arrive more or less in Goldwater's pocket. Sample Tribune comment: "Because Senator Goldwater is the one candidate who can capture large chunks of Democratic votes without conceding to the Democrats more than a handful of GOP votes, he is the obvious choice for the minority party." Goldwater has remained the Tribune's choice through thick and thin. It classified Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton's last-minute arrival onstage as "a late and vain challenge" and "an exercise in futility."

Outside of that, the Tribune should offer little of interest to political tourists; it is preoccupied with local bond issues, civic development and a current crusade to get Oakland a professional football team.

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