The Press: Death of the Times-Star

The brutal news came in telegrams delivered to the homes of the 649 employees of the Cincinnati Times-Star on Sunday afternoon:

“THE NEWSPAPER ASSETS OF THE TIMES-STAR WERE SOLD YESTERDAY TO SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPERS, OWNERS OF THE POST, AND HAS DISCONTINUED PUBLICATION. SINCE THERE IS NO MORE WORK AVAILABLE, WE NO LONGER REQUIRE YOUR SERVICES. PERSONAL BELONGINGS MAY BE REMOVED FROM THE TIMES-STAR ON MONDAY AND TUESDAY. WE REGRET THE BREVITY OF THIS NOTICE.”

The Times-Star was journalism’s second major loss in the space of a single week. Only a few days before, rising costs and lagging ad sales had forced Publisher David Stern III to sell the afternoon New Orleans Item (circ. 101,604) to the Times-Picayune Publishing Co., which owns both the morning Times-Picayune (circ. 189,758) and the afternoon States (circ. 101,916). Contributing to the 81-year-old Item’s failure: the “unit” ad rate of the Times-Picayune and States, which forced national and classified advertisers to take space in both papers, or neither. The Times-Picayune announced that, just to keep competition alive, it would resell the Item to any bidder willing to match the $3,400,000 price within 60 days. But the Item was clearly marked for merger with the States, and New Orleans was fated to join the ranks of the monopoly-ownership newspaper cities.

Struggle for Survival. Like the Taft family that owned it, Cincinnati’s Times-Star for generations had been an institution: sober, solid and solvent. The Times and Star were merged in 1880 by Charles Phelps Taft, half brother of William Howard Taft. In the 1930s and ’40s, the ruggedly Republican afternoon daily vigorously backed Senator Robert A. Taft (who inherited a 5% share of the stock), reportedly earned as much as $1,000,000 a year. Through World War II, the Times-Star generally outhustled Scripps-Howard’s competing afternoon Post.

But after the war, sticking to its conservative coverage and soberly written stories, the Times-Star began to lose ground to the Post, which combined flaring headlines and flamboyant crime stories with solid crusades for clean city government. In 1951 the Post passed the Times-Star in circulation (153,230 v. 150,489). Struggling for survival, the Times-Star twice tried to buy the third and largest paper in town, the morning Enquirer (“Solid Cincinnati Reads the Cincinnati Enquirer”), which has a morning and Sunday monopoly. But in 1956 Scripps-Howard bought control of the Enquirer for $4,059,000 (TIME, May 7. 1956).

Competing alone against two Scripps-Howard papers, the staid Times-Star resorted to promotion contests, bigger headlines and color pictures. The Post cannily counterattacked by becoming more conservative, toned down its headlines and crime coverage, concentrated more and more on worthy civic projects.

With deficits since 1952 and a loss last year of $1,000,000, the decision to sell the 118-year-old Times-Star was made reluctantly by Publisher David S. Ingalls, 59, lawyer, civic leader, grandson of Founder Taft, and manager of the late Senator Taft’s 1952 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Only member of the Taft family opposing the sale was 80-year-old ex-Publisher Hulbert Taft. At the decisive meeting, the old man wept.

“No ‘Centralization.’ ” The sale (at an undisclosed figure) means that solid Cincinnati will have to read Scripps-Howard. But Scripps-Howard President Jack Howard, 47, insists that the morning Enquirer (circ. 205,461) will be free to compete as it likes against the new afternoon Post and Times-Star (first press run: 318,000). “There will be no ‘centralization’ of editorial policies,” said Howard. “Down in Memphis, where we own the Commercial Appeal and the Press-Scimitar, it seems our people hardly speak to each other. They’re ruggedly competitive.”

Twenty years ago. only eight of the U.S.’s 50 largest cities were one-owner newspaper towns. With the demise of the Times-Star and the prospective death of the New Orleans Item, the total will now be 24.

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