Shaking the Empire

"We are trying," said Publisher William Randolph Hearst Jr., "to do away with the oldish elements that have crept into our operations." And so the Hearst empire was getting the biggest shaking up in years. As the "oldish elements" were swept out, so were many of the oldish ideas of the late W. R. Hearst.

Over the wires to the editors of his 18 daily and Sunday papers, Bill Hearst sent orders for more local stories and editorials, more straight news reporting ("Avoid bias or lack of objectivity"). Some papers started using a more conservative makeup. Even the familiar "must-go"editorials, once the staple of every Hearst editorial page, have been reduced.

"What's Our Policy?" Hearst editors have already dropped some of the most cherished campaigns of the Chief and his great & good friend Marion Davies.* Less than a week after Hearst died, the Los Angeles Examiner printed its last blast against vivisection, and other papers in the chain also dropped the subject. When a Milwaukee Sentinel staffer asked, "What's our policy now on McCarthy?" Managing Editor J. J. Packman replied: "We have no policy on McCarthy. Play the story for what it's worth."

Along with urging his papers to push more local issues, Bill Hearst has also been busy reshuffling his high command. He moved Washington Bureau Chief Edward C. Lapping in as executive editor of the ailing Chicago Herald-American. When Publisher Hearst dropped the empire's Saturday Home Magazine, Lapping put out his own Sunday supplement. Into the top spot on Pittsburgh's Sun-Telegraph went Albert E. Dale, a veteran Hearst editor who left twelve years ago, worked for NBC, also did public relations. Lee Ettleson, former executive editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, moved over to run the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, and more changes are in the offing for Detroit and other cities. But the biggest shake-up of all came to the American Weekly, once the brightest jewel in the Hearst diadem.

Candybox-Cover Girls. The Weekly's advertising was ebbing and its circulation (still a giant 9,966,689) had dipped under that of its chief competitor, This Week. To pull it out of the slump, Publisher Hearst called in a magazine specialist, Ernest V. Heyn, 47, who founded and edited Modern Screen for Dell publications, started Sport for Macfadden. Some drastic changes showed up in last week's issue of the Weekly. Heyn got rid of the Weekly's old-fashioned clothes by dumping the wispy, candybox-cover girls. A new editorial diet replaced the oldtime brew of bloodshed, bosoms and pseudo-science that had built the Weekly up in its heyday, but let it down in its old age. (The first Weekly editor, Morrill Goddard, regularly held up as a model to his writers the famed Weekly headline: NAILED HER FATHER'S HEAD TO THE FRONT DOOR.) The Weekly began to run more how-to-do-it features on fashions, homemaking, health and beauty.

So far, such Hearst magazines as Harper's Bazaar, House Beautiful and Good Housekeeping have not been touched by the new broom. But their turn may come. A new editor and other new staffers have already moved in on Hearst's American Druggist and it will soon come out fortnightly instead of monthly.

*Who has kept out of Hearstpaper affairs, except as a $1-a-year adviser (TIME, Nov. 5). The first sign of her advice: when her friend Sonja Henie opened her ice show on the West Coast, the San Francisco Examiner ran feature stories for four straight days, the Call-Bulletin headlined a rave review: SONJA'S ICE SHOW WINS HEART OF S.F.

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