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The Sun is the unbending patriarch of Baltimore, and acutely conscious of the dignity and the responsibilities of venerable old age. Like a wise old uncle exercising his seniority, it tells Baltimoreans what to do, and Baltimoreans apparently listen. Faced with a perplexing maze of 20 municipal bond issues in a 1962 election, most voters clipped a Sun editorial, took it to the polls, and followed the paper's recommendations to the letter. The Sun demands a high order of intelligence from its readers. Stories are written not to entertain but to inform; text is never displaced for purely cosmetic considerations—by a picture, say, to break up a formidable-looking front page. If Baltimoreans do not know what is going on everywhere, their ignorance is not the Sun's fault. It staffs bureaus all over the world, keeps 14 men in Washington. Upon being asked if the Sun was a crusading paper, Managing Editor Charles H. Dorsey answered with feeling: "Good God, I hope we never become one." His style is the style of Arunah Shepherdson Abell, the vagabond printer who started the Sun in 1837 and whose descendants are still on the board. The paper remains aloof, aristocratic, oldfashioned, proud and something of a snob—just the way Baltimoreans like it.
The Cleveland Press
The Press strives to be with the people, always at their side, always beating with their hearts.
— Louis B. Seltzer
Circulation 353,000 evenings. Independent. Endorsed Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936, has since backed Republicans for President.
Louis Seltzer, 66, who has edited the Press since 1928, has kept Cleveland first in his heart. Ohio comes next. Then the U.S., and then the world. After that, perhaps, come the interests of the Scripps-Howard chain to which the paper belongs. No cause is too large for the Press—or too small. It hid a camera in a bawdyhouse and snapped pictures of city cops taking lunch there. When the Press disagreed with the Cleveland Bar Association's candidate for the municipal bench, it asked its readers to write in the name of an unknown young lawyer whom the paper preferred. The young lawyer won. If the Press likes a politician, it can boost him into almost any office. Frank Lausche, a Democrat, rose from Cleveland mayor to Ohio Governor to U.S. Senator on Press support. If the Press doesn't like a politician, the whole city soon finds out. Before an election last November, the Press's rundown of candidates identified one aspiring city councilman as "an admitted tax cheat," another as "Front man for a slum landlord." Monuments to the Press's love for the city dot the landscape: a handsome lakefront development, an expanded public hall, new low-cost apartment houses built over slums, a new community college. But Seltzer and the Press are too busy to pause and admire their handiwork. The paper throws parties for the bassinet set and Golden Wedding couples. It sends Nationalities Editor Theodore Andrica abroad just to look up relatives of foreign-born Clevelanders. Some years ago, when an indigent old woman died alone in the city, leaving a note and a dog, authorities were not surprised to discover that the note was addressed to the Press. "The only thing I own is my dog," read the note. "Please take it to the Press. I know the home they find will be a good one."