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Endurable Defeat. For Greenhorn Publisher Kiewit, it was also a wonderful way in to a new game, despite the high price of admission. The 77-year-old World-Herald is a prosperous if not an outstanding daily, and it is the only one in town. Self-styled as independent, it became Republican and conservative soon after its founder, Democratic Senator Gilbert Hitchcock, died in 1934. It is solidly established in a conservative Republican state. It gives Nebraskans what they want: a tidy-looking paper heavy on rural affairs and light on international affairs, concise and easily digested frontpage stories that almost never ask the reader to turn to an inside page. Its seven morning and five afternoon editions, with a combined circulation of 254,962 (270,189 on Sunday), returned a handsome profit last year of $1,700,000 after taxes. Assorted other properties owned by the controlling World Publishing Company, including Omaha television station KETV, produced an additional net profit of more than $300,000. The paper also has $8,000,000 cash on hand.
Missing out in Omaha was a keen disappointment to Publisher Newhouse. Having repeatedly demonstrated his ability to make losing papers pay, he now prefers the pleasure and challenge of making profitable papers pay more. But the defeat was perhaps endurable to a man who has other ways to spend his money,* and who in the course of collecting all or part of 19 dailies, has reached in vain for 25 more.
*Last week Newhouse announce that he has pledged $13 million to Syracuse University's Newhouse Communications Center, created 2 years ago with an initial Newhouse gift of $2,000,000.