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More than cosmetics is involved though. Says a reporter for the Gannett News Service of his employer: "I really get the feeling that they're trying to take their wealth and put it back into quality." Nowhere is this more evident than in Washington, where the G.N.S. bureau's budget has been raised from $250,000 in 1967 to $3.3 million today. Once content merely to keep Gannett papers posted on the good deeds of their local Congressmen, the Washington editorial staff now numbers 33, covers national and international news in some depth and undertakes a variety of investigative projects. "The attitude at present seems to be 'spend now and ask questions later,' " one bureau member says.
Gannett's Pulitzer-winning investigation required a commitment of time and resources that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. Three reporters, William F. Schmick, 38, John M. Hanchette, 37, and Carlton Sherwood, 32, were detached from regular duties for nine months to find out what had happened to money raised by the Pauline Fathers for a national shrine. The reporters traveled to 17 states and four foreign countries and ran up nearly $100,000 in expenses. They finally loosed an 18-part, 40,000-word series alleging that the order squandered a substantial portion of $20 million in charitable donations, loans, investments and bond proceeds. The series had the temerity to suggest that officials of the Roman Catholic Church including Pope John Paul II had engaged in a cover-up—a charge that brought angry denunciations from Catholic pulpits and, in a few cities, calls for anti-Gannett boycotts.
The prestige of winning the Gold Medal (the chain or its papers have received four previous Pulitzers, the last in 1971) should help Gannett fend off critics of chain ownership. More than 63% of the nation's 1,769 dailies are now owned by groups, double the percentage in 1960, and independent papers are being gobbled up at a rate of 50 or 60 a year. What bothers critics most is a reduction in the diverse, often lively voices of independent newspapers. There are complaints, too, that chains tend to be obsessed with profits and indifferent to editorial excellence. Says Congressman Morris Udall, an Arizona Democrat who is an outspoken opponent of chains: "I think you are losing something pretty precious when you have a large organization ... that is more interested in the bottom line than what's good for the community."
Newspaper groups have an energetic defender in Neuharth, a wiry (5 ft. 7 in., 150 lbs.) imp with an athletic walk, a lopsided grin and a supremely self-confident air. Born and raised in South Dakota, he made a name for himself at the Miami Herald, a Knight (now Knight-Ridder) paper, where he rose from reporter to assistant managing editor in four years, and later at Knight's Detroit Free Press. Neuharth joined Gannett in 1963 and was president by 1970, leading some colleagues to snipe that his rise came a little too fast. "When Al wears a sharkskin suit," a friend once observed, "it's hard to tell where the shark stops and he begins."