• U.S.

Newspapers: Fairness in Phoenix

5 minute read
TIME

A few years back, a joke was making the rounds of Phoenix. Publisher Eugene C. Pulliam asks one of his managing editors: “What did Barry Goldwater say today?” The editor replies: “Nothing.” “Fine,” says Pulliam. “Put it right on page one, but keep it down to two columns.”

Times have changed. Goldwater is very cool to his old friend Pulliam these days. And Pulliam’s papers, the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette, have lost their partisan image and greatly improved and broadened their news coverage. This week Pulliam receives the University of Arizona’s John Peter Zenger Award* for “distinguished service in support of freedom of the press and the people’s right to know.” (Among previous recipients: the New York Times’s James Reston and Washington Post Editor James Russell Wiggins).

Pulliam’s papers, the only two dailies in Phoenix, no longer play up only the conservative view of news and dismiss what is distasteful to them. Now they give equal space to varying shades of opinion. The editorial pages not only support Democratic Senator Carl Hayden as well as Republican Senator Paul Fannin; they also balance liberal columnists, such as Walter Lippmann, against conservatives, such as William Buckley. Morale was once so low that innumerable staffers quit in disgust, and many were fired. Now, Pulliam runs a happy shop. “We are all Pulliam’s babies,” says one veteran staffer, actually brushing away a tear.

On the Merits. Of the two papers, the morning Republic (circ. 156,000), has changed more dramatically than the afternoon Gazette (100,000). In the last four years, the Republic has boosted its reporting staff from 65 to 100, stationed one reporter in Viet Nam while others roam, the globe. Arizona staffers have delved into such topics as poverty, the new math, smog, pornography, and corruption in the state tax commission. The paper fought successfully to save nearby scenic Camelback Mountain from private developers.

This new look in newspapers is not unique to Phoenix. Papers across the U.S. are no longer reacting to issues in quite so ideological a way; instead, they confront each issue on its own merits.

Still, much of the improvement in the Pulliam papers can be chalked up to Pulliam himself, who has always been portrayed as more of an intransigent conservative than he actually is. At 76, Pulliam is one of those publishers who is a newspaperman first. “Why in hell,” he asks, “should a man want to sell newspapers? If I wanted to make money, I’d gointo the bond business. I’ve never been interested in the money we make but in the influence we have.”

The son of a Kansas Methodist missionary, Pulliam attended DePauw University, later joined the Kansas City Star. At 23, he gave up working for a newspaper to buy one: The Atchison (Kans.) Champion. From then on, he bought and sold papers until he built up enough equity to land four that satisfied him: the Indianapolis Star in 1944, the two Phoenix papers in 1946, the Indianapolis News in 1948. Deeply in debt, Pulliam kept nervously reshuffling his staffs for several years and baldly promoting his conservative opinions. But after gaining confidence, he decided that his papers were too doctrinaire even for him. He began to give all of his papers more freedom, and in 1960, when J. Edward Murray lost his job as managing editor of the Los Angeles Mirror, Pulliam invited him to Phoenix. “I’m no pink,” Murray told Pulliam, “but I’m too liberal for your blood.” Pulliam disagreed and put him in charge of the Republic.

An Aversion to Power. Murray encouraged staffers to think for themselves and stop trying to read Pulliam’s mind. He slugged it out a few times with Pulliam over issues, but mostly the two have seen eye-to-eye. Pulliam’s papers supported Goldwater for President, but lukewarmly. “It isn’t fair to the Democrats to give him extravagant support,” Pulliam told Murray. “He is not a superman, and I don’t believe in supermen.” Murray hastened to agree. “The old conservatism is changing into a new sophistication in Phoenix,” and the papers must guide the town.

The Pulliam papers now exert so much influence that Pulliam is worried. Like other thoughtful conservatives, he fears vast power, even his own. He refuses to add special news or advertising sections to his papers to increase their sales in the suburbs. “Competition is good for us,” he says. “There’s plenty of room for the suburban papers. Let them live.” He will not serve on company boards in Phoenix and discourages people from coming to the papers for advice on civic projects. “They should go ahead on their own,” he declares, true to his individualistic creed. “We will support them if we think they are right, and oppose them if we think they are wrong.”

*Named for the colonial New York newspaper printer who was jailed for criminal libel against the British Crown in 1734. Zenger’s acquittal by a local jury established not only truth as a defense against libel, but also the principle of freedom of the press in America.

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