Manhattan’s bustling Sam Newhouse seldom stops running on his constant tours of his chain of ten newspapers.* Last week, Publisher Newhouse stopped long enough in Hoboken to buy the sickly Jersey Observer and merge it with his Journal in adjoining Jersey City. The Observer, which cost him a little more than $1,000,000, will give his Journal a combined circulation of almost 100,000 and a virtual evening-paper monopoly in teeming (pop. 646,000), industrial Hudson County.
Like many U.S. dailies, the 59-year-old Observer had been squeezed between rocketing production costs and a static advertising intake. The bigger Jersey Journal, said its new owner, will be strong, and thus “a better product” for readers. Among newspaper tycoons, little (5 ft. 3 in.) Samuel I. Newhouse is growing fast. A month earlier, he had bought complete control of the money-making Journal (he had held half interest since 1946), only eleven months after he bought Portland’s Oregonian. He is still looking for more papers. Says Newhouse: “Publishers can make up for rising costs by increased volume.”
-Syracuse Herald-Journal, Post-Standard, Long Island Press, Star-Journal, Newark Star-Ledger, Staten Island Advance, Harrisburg News, Patriot, Portland Oregonian, Jersey Journal.
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