"Mr. Newhouse is Not Here"

Harvey D. Burrill was a hardboiled, arrogant, capable newspaperman who joined the Syracuse (N. Y.) evening Journal as a cub reporter, rose to be publisher in 1904, and reared the Journal from a weakling to the strongest newspaper in the city. In 1922 William Randolph Hearst moved into Syracuse, with the Telegram, in three years pushed Harvey Burrill into a corner and made him sell the Journal. Kept on as publisher by Hearst, Harvey Burrill lived with two consuming ambitions: 1) to celebrate the Journal's 100th anniversary, 2) to buy it back. Last Christmas Eve Publisher Burrill died, three months before the paper celebrated its 100th birthday with a 250-page edition and seven months, less one day, before the Syracuse American (Sunday edition of the Journal) announced on its front page: "The Syracuse Herald has acquired the names of the Syracuse Journal and the Syracuse Sunday American."

Back of this curt announcement last week was a story that had kept Syracuse newspapermen in the jitters for months. Liquidating wherever they could, the tough businessmen who run the Hearst empire had let it be known that the profitable Journal and American could be bought. Six weeks ago Harvey Burrill's son, Louis, who succeeded him as publisher, could have had it for $750,000. While he dickered, a stranger went to Syracuse.

Stubby, ruddy Samuel I. Newhouse had worked his way from office boy to publisher of the Bayonne, N. J., Times, bought the Staten Island, N. Y., Advance and made it pay, reached out to acquire the Jamaica Long Island Press, the Long Island City Star-Journal, the Newark, N. J., Ledger. He was quietly buying an interest in the doddering Syracuse Herald when he heard about the Hearst-Burrill negotiations. Seeing a chance to control the evening field in Syracuse, Publisher Newhouse persuaded his backers to put up more money, offered $975,000 for the Journal and American, got them quick from the delighted Hearstians.

This week 27 Journal employes joined the Herald. About 500 were out of jobs. Though up-&-coming Sam Newhouse will be the power behind the rejuvenated Herald, he was reluctant to have his coup known. Over most of the weekend he was locked up in a Syracuse Hotel room but the only word to be got from the room was: "Mr. Newhouse is not here."

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