War in Rhode Island

In Providence, the proud old Journal (circulation, 44,000) and its evening running mate, the Bulletin (circulation, 98-663), are two rear-guard Republican sheets in a Democratic State. Major owners of the two papers are the dignified, prosperous Metcalf brothers, textile tycoons long listed among the big potentates of small Rhode Island. Last week, the Metcalfs suddenly found themselves standing by to repel journalistic boarders.

Rowdy Democrats from dingy Pawtucket, five miles away, seemed to be approaching on two quarters, armed to the teeth. The Pawtucket Star, a weekly established to bait the Journal, was to become a daily tabloid, change its title to Rhode Island Star. Back of the Star was Pawtucket's Democratic Mayor Thomas P. McCoy. Back of him was Walter E. O'Hara, managing director of Pawtucket's Narragansett race track. Announcing the change, the Star defied the Journal-Bulletin owners as "money barons and sweatshop operators." And, as if this disturbance in the Journal's back yard were not enough, Mr. O'Hara suddenly popped up right in the Journals front yard. It was announced that he had acquired the feeble Providence News-Tribune (evening) which had been nursed along by Democratic Senator Peter G. Gerry as a political sounding-board to 25,000 pairs of readers' ears. Out went dignified, high-collared Editor Joaquim B. Calvo. Up went Ralph E. Bailey from his job as head of the News-Tribune State House staff to be managing editor. With the News-Tribune, Mr. O'Hara acquired an Associated Press franchise, a chance to go directly to Providence's 252,981 potential newspaper readers with more popular politics than that of his well-entrenched rivals.

Also, Publisher O'Hara had a chance to pay off some rankling old scores, for back of this realignment of Providence papers lay a long and bitter feud. Last March, a Pawtucket city official threw a Journal camera into the flooded Blackstone River. For reasons of their own, Pawtucket politicians had insisted on building the new City Hall on a low-lying lot, and they did not want their location photographed with water creeping over it. Also in March, Walter O'Hara sued the Journal for $1,000,000 for libel because it intimated that he was working in collusion with Pawtucket officials to sell that city a bargain-bought textile mill to use as a power plant. Shortly afterward, Democratic State Representatives scowled at the Journal by passing a measure calling for the investigation of its tax payments to the City of Providence, supposedly because it had been under-assessed. In October, another camera was destroyed. This time it belonged to the Star, and the Journal's Editor Sevellon Brown was accused of breaking it. When a judge released Mr. Brown, the Star let loose a journalistic catcall at the decision, was promptly held in contempt of court by the incensed jurist.

Aside from political animosity, there is another cogent reason why the Pawtucket denizens have heckled the Journal so insistently. Both Journal and Bulletin oppose Mr. O'Hara's Narragansett track. Not very high in the established social scale of U. S. race tracks, the Narragansett course is nevertheless one of the most lucrative in the land. Into the stout little satchels of its pari-mutuel cashiers are packed hard-earned Rhode Island dollars to the tune of some two million a year. The Star likes to attribute the Journal and Bulletin hostility to the fact that their owners own no stock in the track. Certain it is that Bulletins hefty department store advertisers look on the track's activities with a thoroughly jaundiced eye.

Though they would scorn to admit that Mr. O'Hara & associates had them frightened, the Journal and Bulletin by last week had done plenty to fend off the News-Tribune and the Star in a circulation war. Outstanding preparations included amplifying personnel, buying another page of comics for the Bulletin and Hearst International News Service and Universal Service to supplement the A. P.. United Press, and North American Newspaper Alliance Services on both sheets.

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