Up With the Biggest

With insatiable appetite, Newspaper Publisher Samuel I. Newhouse, 67, has already bolted down 14 dailies, is in the process of swallowing three more (the Denver Post and the Springfield. Mass., Union and News). And Sam is still hungry. Last week he began to spread the table for his biggest feast yet. On the menu: the New Orleans morning Times-Picayune (circ. 191,751) and its evening companion, the States-Item (160,567).

Tipped by a newspaper broker, Newhouse flew down to New Orleans fortnight ago, heavily loaded with hard cash. Before the nine board members of the Times-Picayune Publishing Co., Newhouse waved an offer of $42 million--his price for all 280,000 shares of the company's stock. Seven of the directors promptly produced 100,000 shares, more than enough for effective working control.

Newhouse said no; he remembered Denver and Springfield, where local interests are still opposing his efforts to take over full control. This time he wanted all of the stock, or, at the very least, another 40,000 shares--which would give him 50% of both papers, and actual control. Next Newhouse move was a letter to the company's 1,300 stockholders, offering $150 a share. Since this is some $30 to $40 more than the present market value, just about all that separates Newhouse from his intended banquet is the week that stockholders were given in which to make up their minds.

The only shares that Newhouse is not likely to get by the deadline are some 60,000 controlled by Jerry K. Nicholson, 32, son of the Times-Picayune's longtime editor, Leonard K. Nicholson, who died in 1952. Although Jerry wants to keep the papers in the family, and has appealed to stockholders to resist the little man (5 ft. 3 in.) with the big purse, his campaign has small chance of success. By week's end, Newhouse was collecting commitments from stockholders at a rate that assured him the actual control he seeks.

Even at $42 million--a figure that represents the biggest newspaper deal in U.S. journalistic history, and two-thirds of what he paid for all his other papers combined--Sam Newhouse is getting a bargain. The Times-Picayune and the States-Item netted $2,482,907 after taxes last year--a handsome profit figure that Sam Newhouse has every hope of improving. When he completes the deal, Newhouse will also realize a dream that he has nourished for a long time: by adding the two New Orleans links to his chain, Newhouse will join Scripps-Howard, 19 papers to 19, to become the biggest newspaper publisher in the U.S.*

*But he will still be dwarfed by Canadian-born Roy Thomson, who bought the Dalton, Ga., Daily News (circ. 5,000) last week and ran his international collection of newspapers to 99.

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