The Press: A Friendly Arrangement

The long-distance call from New York to Louisville connected two old friends: Captain Harry F. Guggenheim, 73, owner of Long Island’s Newsday, and Mark F. Ethridge, 67, who recently retired after a long career as editor and publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal. “I need you out here, Mark,” said Guggenheim. Said Ethridge: “I’ll do everything I can.” He flew East, thinking he knew exactly what Harry wanted: a friend’s guidance during the difficult period of adjustment following the death of his wife, Alicia Patterson, Newsday’s creator and editor (TIME, July 12). But to Ethridge’s surprise, that was not what Guggenheim wanted at all. Last week Mark Ethridge agreed to serve as editor of Newsday.

It was an arrangement of convenience. The captain could go on influencing the paper’s editorial course, just as he used to do in his wife’s time, when he would take space in Newsday to espouse candidates and causes conflicting with hers. Old Friend Ethridge could indulge his retirement plan to teach a once-a-week seminar on newspaper management at the University of North Carolina. The rest of the time he would run the paper and hold a sort of private seminar for Newsday Staffer Joseph Patterson Albright, 26, Alicia’s nephew, whose succession to Harry Guggenheim’s paper and Mark Ethridge’s new job is, according to present schedules, only a matter of time.