Since he saved enough money as a reporter to buy his first newspaper 41 years ago, shrewd Oscar Stauffer, 69, has bought twelve small dailies (total circ. 110,000) and three radio stations,* chiefly in Kansas and the Midwest. Last week, at a single stroke, Stauffer took over the vaster domain (total circ. 5,000,000) of another self-made publisher, Kansas' late Senator Arthur Capper. Reported purchase price: $7,300,000.
Stauffer's buy gave him a monopoly in the state capital as well as the surrounding region's only morning paper, the Topeka Daily Capital (circ. 64,304), which since...