Mum was the word. Los Angeles Times Publisher Otis Chandler was on a hunting safari and could not be reached. Newsday's majority stockholder, Captain Harry Guggenheim, was out of reach in Florida. Newsday Publisher Bill Moyers was not answering his phone. "Mr. Moyers is just like everyone else around here," said an assistant. "He's under orders not to say anything to anyone about the situation."
The "situation" that all of them were not talking about was the possible sale of the nation's largest suburban daily to the publishing giant of the West. Informal meetings between Newsday's Guggenheim and Norman Chandler, chairman of the executive committee of the Times Mirror Co. (which publishes the Los Angeles Times), began three weeks ago. "The Captain," ailing at 79, is anxious to divest himself of the paper, and Chandler is anxious to buy, to the extent of a reported $75 million worth of Times Mirror stock. The rub: Minority Stockholders Joseph Albright (Newsday's Washington bureau chief) and Alice Albright Hoge, the heirs of Mrs. Guggenheim (Alicia Patterson), were balking. At Newsday itself, at least 124 reporters and editors signed a petition protesting the sale.
For the Times Mirror Co., the merger —if consummated—will culminate a decade-long drive that thus far has made it the third largest in U.S. publishing. Six months ago, the company also entered into a merger agreement with the Dallas Times Herald and its three local TV and radio stations.
Newsday's growth, since its founding in 1940 in a converted garage with a $50,000 investment, has been only slightly less meteoric. From an initial press run of 30,000 copies, the smartly turned-out tabloid has grown to a circulation approaching half a million, seventh among all evening papers in the nation. Newsday's strength in such areas as New York entertainment and sports is particularly attractive to the Times Mirror Co., which, with the Washington Post, operates a national news service.
As if one coast-to-coast media merger were not enough, there were reports at week's end that the New York Times, which gave the Los Angeles Times-Newsday story front-page play, was talking to the Hearst Corp. about purchasing the strike-troubled Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. New York Times Publisher Arthur Ochs ("Punch") Sulzberger was not available for comment.