Competition in Milwaukee

Toni and Ray McBride live in suburban Wauwatosa, Wis., outside Milwaukee, and have been happily married for 19 years. Professionally they get along like enemies--which they are. "When I call the office," says Toni, who covers women in politics for the Milwaukee Sentinel, "I go over to a neighbor's house or do it while Ray is walking the dog." Her husband, an assistant city editor on Milwaukee's other paper, the Journal, is even more secretive. The McBrides recently lost a relative of some prominence--he was mayor of Green Bay--but Toni did not know it until she read the Journal. Ray kept the news from her until his paper had the obituary in print.

Different Hangouts. A competitive spirit strong enough to affect husband and wife is not only rare, it is practically unheard of where newspaper competition among publishers does not exist at all. Since 1962 the Sentinel has belonged to the Journal, which bought it for $3,000,000 from the Hearst newspaper chain. Until then, the morning Sentinel had seemed content to play listless second fiddle to the long-dominant evening paper, which has 384,000 daily circulation to the Sentinel's 170,000. Since the merger, the Sentinel has acted like a feisty kid trying to beat out big brother.

In the Journal building's fourth-floor cafeteria, Sentinel and Journal staffers sit, by choice, at separate tables; after hours they tipple at different hangouts. One week, when Sentinel Reporter Bob Dishon was offered an advance copy of the city's new $111 million community-renewal program on the condition that he hold the story until 11 Saturday morning, Dishon refused; the release time was too late for the Saturday morning Sentinel, but it would nicely accommodate the evening Journal. Scrambling furiously, Dishon pieced the story together from other sources and published it in the Saturday paper, hours ahead of the Journal.

More Fun. The new rivalry is very much the doing of Journal Publisher and President Victor Irwin ("Dutch") Maier, 65, who felt that competition would benefit both papers. After the merger, the Journal hands who crossed over--among them Assistant Managing Editor Harvey W. Schwandner, now the Sentinel's executive editor--were told that the last thing Dutch Maier wanted was a morning edition of the Journal. "No other two-paper operation that I know about," says Lindsay Hoben, Journal editor and vice president, "grants the autonomy that our papers have." The facts bear him out. Last year, for example, the Sentinel endorsed Goldwater, the Journal Johnson.

To its grant of complete editorial in dependence, the Sentinel has responded by becoming what it seldom was under Hearst: a look-alive newspaper. After publication of a 1963 series on unequal representation in Wisconsin county governments, the Sentinel was dissatisfied with the volume of public indignation. A suit subsequently brought by two Sentinel editors won a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision ordering reapportionment of the boards of supervisors in 70 of the state's 72 counties.

Last month the Sentinel scored an other legal victory, this time against Milwaukee Police Chief Harold A.

Breier. After getting wind of alleged police shenanigans--ticket fixing by cops and an after-hours party in a bowling alley that was heavily attended by blue uniforms--Sentinel newsmen sought out Chief Breier. His response was to refuse access to the departmental orders from which the reporters could have gathered the names of the offenders. That was last spring. The paper took the matter to court, where Breier's departmental records were ordered restored to public scrutiny.

Today, far from feeling inferior to the Journal, the Sentinel feels only challenged. "It's more fun being second, I think," says Sentinel Women's Editor Coleen Dishon, who, like her husband, voluntarily shifted over from the Journal. "Like Avis, we try harder."

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