The Press: Headline of the Week

In the Washington Star:

WOMAN PROVES BODY IN TRUNK ISN’T HERS

Split in the Family

Alicia Patterson was a poor little rich girl, the daughter of New York Daily News Founder Joseph Medill Patterson, childless and restless after two divorces, with little to occupy her but New York’s nightclub circuit. Harry Guggenheim also was born rich; heir to a mining and minerals fortune, he headed two of his family’s multimillion-dollar foundations, served as U.S. Ambassador to Cuba. In 1939, Harry and Alicia were married and set up light housekeeping in a 30-room Norman chateau at Sands Point, Long Island. Within a year, Guggenheim found a novel way of giving Alicia’s life more purpose: he put up $70,000 for her to use in starting a newspaper. “Everybody,” he explained, “ought to have a job.”

Alicia’s new paper was Newsday, and Editor Patterson was born for her job. Breaking all the mossbacked rules of suburban journalism, she made Newsday a paper for all Long Island, a lively and irreverent daily that could always find a local angle to apply to the news of the nation and the world. Newsday, with more advertising linage than any other New York daily and with a circulation that has boomed to 305,958, is a phenomenal commercial success.

Parting Company. That suits Guggenheim just fine. The owner of Cain Hoy Stables, one of the U.S.’s top money-winning horse barns ($742,081 in 1959), Guggenheim spends much of his time following his thoroughbreds, is rarely seen around Newsday’s offices, and is generally content to let Alicia run the Newsday show. It is in the area of politics that Newsday President Harry Guggenheim and Newsday Editor Alicia Patterson part editorial company.

Newsday was only a few months old when, in 1940, its co-owners split politically for the first time. Alicia published an endorsement of Franklin Roosevelt; Harry, a deep-dyed Republican, countered with his own announcement in support of Wendell Willkie. The Guggenheims were agreed in favoring Republicans Thomas E. Dewey in 1948 and Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. And Harry good-naturedly kept his peace in 1956, when Alicia switched to Adlai Stevenson.

Private View. But in Election Year 1960, the Guggenheims are again airing their political differences. Fortnight ago, Editor Patterson again announced her support of Adlai, whom she has admired for more than 30 years and whom she accompanied on his 1957 tour of Africa. Stevenson, she wrote, is “the best possible candidate” by virtue of “his experience, his wisdom and his ability.” Last week Guggenheim replied in a signed announcement opposite Newsday’s editorial page. Republican Richard Nixon, he wrote, “should be nominated by the Republican Party and elected by all of the people.”

In explaining his difference of opinion with Alicia, Guggenheim was amiable enough. “I don’t call it a quarrel,” he said. “I’m expressing my own private political view.” Then he added: “Of course it can’t in any way be separated from my presidency of Newsday.” In short, any time Newsday Co-Owner (49%) Alicia Patterson tries to tell Co-Owner (51%) Harry Guggenheim how to vote. Husband Harry can be counted on to put in his extra two per cent’s worth.