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Oregon's maverick U.S. Senator Wayne Morse considers Newhouse a national plague. "The American people," cried Morse, in a sulphurous 1960 speech from the Senate floor, "need to be warned before it is too late about the threat which is arising as a result of the monopolistic practices of the Newhouse interests." That same year, when Newhouse bought into two Springfield, Mass, dailies, Sidney R. Cook, treasurer and board member, promptly called the interloper "a menace" and "a graveyard superintendent" who "goes around picking up the bones—preying on widows and split families." Added Cook: "I can tell you this. Newhouse will never get into Springfield." Newhouse has not since set foot in the city.
The New Yorker's A. J. (The Wayward Pressman) Liebling, a self-appointed spare-time judge of journalistic transgressions, has bestowed on Newhouse the title of "journalistic chiffonnier"—a French word that means "ragpicker." While Newhouse was angling for Portland's evening daily, the Oregon Journal (he hooked it last year), David Eyre, then the Journal's managing editor, pointedly referred to him in print as Samuel ISIDOR New-house." (Newhouse is indeed of Jewish descent, but his middle initial stands for nothing at all.) Last week, inspired in part by Newhouse's acquisition of New Orleans and in part by an ambition to make headlines, Democratic U.S. Representative Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn announced that the House Judiciary Committee would investigate newspaper monopolies —among them Sam Newhouse's—as soon as Congress adjourns.
Early Chains. As a "monopolist," Newhouse has to give considerable ground to the early U.S. chain builders. Beginning in the 1880s, and teaming with one partner or another, a onetime Rushville, Ill., farm boy named Edward Wyllis Scripps bought or started 52 dailies as well as a news agency (United Press) and various feature syndicates. Hearst, another prodigious newspaper buyer, acquired a total of 42 dailies, also had his own wire service (International News Service), a Sunday supplement (American Weekly), a kit bag of magazines, and even a film company (established mainly to produce star vehicles for his mistress). In 1933, with 27 papers, Hearst controlled 11.2% of U.S. daily circulation and nearly 20% on Sunday.
Observing such men, Frank A. Munsey, who was something of a chain welder himself, predicted in 1903 that "it will not be many years—five or ten perhaps—before the publishing business of this country will be done by a few concerns." Munsey's timing was off and his prophecy far too sweeping. But for a whole catalogue of reasons, U.S. newspapers have found it increasingly expedient to cut down competition for the sake of survival.
Economic pressures chopped even the giants to size. Hornblower Hearst was so vastly unconcerned with the balance sheet that his papers ran at a constant loss; in the early 1930s his empire nearly foundered in red ink. Only drastic pruning snatched him from financial ruin—and