Merging the Elephants

When an ailing and beloved elephant named Coca was put to death at the

Atlanta zoo three weeks ago, Atlanta's Forsyth Street at once became the scene of a spectacular elephant hunt. On Forsyth Street stand the modern plants of the morning Atlanta Constitution and its evening rival, the Atlanta Journal. Coca had barely stopped kicking when the Journal, biggest paper in the South (circ. 245,033), launched a Page One campaign to collect enough nickels, dimes and dollars from Atlanta's bereaved youngsters to buy a new elephant. The Constitution (circ. 180,948) in turn exhorted the kiddies to contribute to its own elephant fund.

A fortnight ago the Constitution claimed victory: it reached its quota first. But last week the Journal won out after all: it acquired the Constitution lock, stock & pachyderm, and merged the papers.

Monopoly No. 3. The Constitution's new boss is 79-year-old James Middleton Cox, three-time governor of Ohio, onetime (1920) Democratic candidate for President, owner of three radio stations and publisher of the Journal and five other newspapers.*The old boss was Major (World War I) Clark Howell, 55, whose family has controlled the Constitution since 1876, and who will stay on as its publisher for ten years. The Constitution will continue to publish in the morning, the Journal in the evening; the two Sunday papers will be consolidated. The merger gave Publisher Cox, who frequently deplores the growth of newspaper monopoly (TIME, Jan. 17, 1949), his third monopoly, and raised the number of major monopoly cities in the U.S. to 26.

Most Atlantans (as the Constitution calls them) and Atlantians (as the Journal calls them) were surprised at the merger; Atlanta Broker Richard W. Courts had kept the negotiations hush-hush by using code symbols instead of names. But they should not have been too surprised. In the ten years since spry old ex-Governor Cox took over the Journal, it has moved from neck & neck in circulation and advertising to undisputed first place in circulation, revenue and newspaper enterprise.

Dixie Dew. The 81-year-old Constitution saw its greatest days in the era of Publisher Evan Howell, famed Editor Henry Woodfin Grady, Joel Chandler (Uncle Remus) Harris, and Frank (Mighty Lak a Rose) Stanton. Under the late Clark Howell Sr., it also fought the Ku Klux Klan and won a Pulitzer Prize (1931) for exposing municipal graft. But the present Clark Howell and his liberal but erratic Editor Ralph McGill have let Cox & Co. take the play away. Example: while the Constitution merely deplored Herman Talmadge, the Journal campaigned aggressively against him, and Reporter George Goodwin won a Pulitzer in 1948 by exposing vote-rigging for Talmadge. The 67-year-old Journal ("Covers Dixie Like the Dew") also regularly beats the slower Constitution in news and pictures. The Constitution's biggest drawing card: the folksy column by peripatetic Editor McGill, who was in Israel last week. Acquisition of the Constitution, with radio station WCON thrown in, did not cost Publisher Cox a cent in cash. (In 1939, he had paid about $3,000,000 for the Journal, another $2,000,000 for its radio station, and $800,000 more for Hearst's Georgian and Sunday American, which he folded.) Last week's deal was a straight stock swap: Howell & Co. exchanged their control of the Constitution properties (valued at $4,500,000) for the non-voting preferred stock in a new corporation that will control the merged papers. Chairman of the board and owner (with his family) of the voting common stock: James M. Cox.

-The Springfield (Ohio) News and Sun; the Dayton Daily News and Journal Herald; the Miami News.

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