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In 1954 the Post's big chance arrived. A.P. Chief Kent Cooper got in touch with Meyer from Florida, hinted that there might be a newspaper for sale. "Is it in Florida?" Meyer asked. "No," said Cooper guardedly. "Washington?" tried Meyer. "Yes." Meyer then knew that Colonel McCormick wanted to sell out. McCormick, who had tried to run the Times-Herald like a Washington edition of the Chicago Tribune, had been losing heavily, while the Post had edged into the black. Six weeks later the Post closed the deal for the merger that gave it a morning monopoly in Washington. Cost: $8,500,000 for the Times-Herald, plus $1,800,000 for severance pay and incidentals. The money came this time mostly from loans, partly from Phil Graham, who decided that Gene Meyer had done enough already in pouring some $20 million into the paper.
From the Times-Herald, the Post kept two pages of comics, a picture page, extra sports and financial coverage and a raft of features. The merger also left the paper with the combined services of A.P., U.P., I.N.S., Reuters and the syndicated output of the Chicago Tribune and Daily News, plus the New York Herald Tribune and News. On Sundays the merged paper offers a glut of side dishes: two magazine sections, two comic sections, two tabloid magazines. More important, the Post managed to keep its old self dominant and yet hang on to the bulk of the old Times-Herald circulation.
No Clink or Patter. The merger is the major landmark in Publisher Graham's ten-year-old regime. He has kept busy beefing up the paper's neglected business-office side in other ways. He brought in top circulation and business executives, hedged against the future by buying radio and TV stations WTOP in Washington and WMBR in Jacksonville (total cost: $7.8 million). He also raised the Post's long-pinched salaries. Fortnight ago he signed an unprecedented long-term (five years) contract with the Newspaper Guild giving staffers the top U.S. newspaper wage ($160-a-week minimum in four years).
On the editorial side, where his heart lies, Graham has boosted community coverage and recast the top echelon. Managing Editor Friendly and 37-year-old Ohioan Robert Harley Estabrook, chief of the editorial page (who voted for Stevenson in 1952, though the paper had plumped for Eisenhower), serve under Executive Editor J. (for James) Russell Wiggins, 53.
An alumnus of the New York Times, Minnesotan Wiggins (who stands politically in the middle of the road) runs his operation with the cold, neat passion of a spinster picking cat hairs off the chesterfield. Under an intricate system that he devised, an assistant city editor giving an assignment records it on a dark green slip; if photos are needed with the story, he uses a red slip; for morgue pictures, a pink slip; if a cab is needed, a light green slip. Oldtimers wistfully recall the clink of glasses and patter of mice in the battered old Post city room. In the antiseptic new one—done in a sterile grey—Wiggins permits no coffee or sandwiches at desks, nothing on the walls but maps. Staffers may smoke if they wish; Wiggins provides ashtrays.