Rupert Murdoch, 45, the Australian-born press buccaneer, first met Dorothy Schiff, 73, the coquettish editor in chief and publisher of the New York Post, one afternoon about six years ago. "I rang her up, as fellow publishers tend to do," he recalls, "told her I was in town and would like to have a look at her plant." It was love at first sight. "I lusted after the Post," he says. So had many others. The oldest continuously published daily in the U.S., the Post (circ. 500,000) has been the only afternoon paper in the nation's largest city since 1967—but Dolly Schiff had failed to make the most of it, editorially or financially. Last week Murdoch plucked the unripened plum. He waltzed Dolly into an agreement in principle to sell him the Post for a sum neither would disclose but which industry insiders estimated to be about $30 million.
The move stunned New York's other dailies. "It hit us like a ton of bricks," said a top editor of the News, which has been considering an afternoon paper of its own. Said A.M. Rosenthal, managing editor of the Times, which also eyed the afternoon field nine years ago: "I wouldn't want to say a word about it. We'll have to see." Even at the Post, where the staffs only small clue to Schiff's intentions might have been her request last month to see clippings on Murdoch, the announcement came as a surprise. Schiff's editors were not even tipped in time to break the news in her own paper. Said Village Voice Senior Editor Jack Newfield, himself a former Postman: "As usual, the paper was scooped by everybody."
The Post has not always been undistinguished. Founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, it has been edited by some of the great names in American letters: William Cullen Bryant, E.L. Godkin, Carl Schurz. Schiff, who was born into a prominent Manhattan banking family, bought the money-losing Post in 1939 for her second husband, George Backer. They were later divorced, and she eventually assumed near-dictatorial control of the paper. Aided by a generally liberal editorial line, the Post survived as other New York dailies died one by one.
But its own turn may have been coming. Obsessed with features and columnists, Schiff gave increasingly short shrift to news coverage. Her tightfistedness with the Post editorial budget extended to approving all out-of-town trips for reporters. Despite the paper's midday monopoly, circulation and advertising began to dwindle, and the paper has been barely making a profit.