Key to the Enquirer

Cincinnati's three newspapers last week had Page One news in which all three figured. Up for sale went a block of bonds convertible into 36.5% of the stock--working control--of the city's only morning and Sunday paper, the prosperous Enquirer (circ. 206,408). Among the bidders: the Scripps-Howard chain, which owns the Cincinnati Post (circ. 164,646), and the city's third paper, the Taft-owned Times-Star (circ. 154,314), which narrowly missed taking over the Enquirer in 1952. The winner: Scripps-Howard, which paid $4,059,000 against a Times-Star bid of $2,380,051.

The bonds were sold by Chicago Financier Harold L. Stuart, 74, who got them for $1,402,200 in 1952 when he floated $6,000,000 in loans to swing the deal that kept the paper out of the Times-Star's hands. It was Stuart's 1952 deal that enabled Enquirer employees to win their campaign to take control of the paper themselves. It was Stuart's impatience with the Enquirer's internal management squabbles (TIME, Dec. 5 et seq.) that prompted him to sell out last week.

A Post editorial assured readers--and staff--that the papers would go on with their separate identities. Scripps-Howard's 36.5% of Enquirer stock will not come into its own hands until August 1957; until then, the stock must go into the voting trust run by Enquirer Publisher Roger Ferger, who tried hard to block last week's deal. Meanwhile, the chain is trying to buy more Enquirer stock.

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