Mr. Cleveland Bows Out

Ordinarily, Louis Seltzer would have been smiling. It was the end of an exhausting, satisfying week In which the Cleveland Press had run a series of touching stories about a Hong Kong reunion it had arranged between soldiers serving in Viet Nam and their Cleveland families. Yet Seltzer had tears in his eyes much of last Friday as he cleared out the last memorabilia from his office and bade his staff farewell. After half a century with the Scripps-Howard Press, and 38 years as its editor, "Mr. Cleveland" was reluctantly retiring.

His retirement was no reflection on his performance. He was 68 years old; his wife Marion had died of cancer last month, and he no longer had the zest and energy to put out a daily newspaper. Looking back, however, he could take pride in having made the Press one of the best papers in the nation because it served Cleveland. "Our newspaper has integrated itself into this community in a way no other newspaper in America has," he said. "It is the journalistic rock upon which this city is built."

Up from Offis Boy. Under Seltzer's guidance, the Press successfully urged the rebuilding of much of Cleveland: a new airport, a "shoreway" along Lake Erie, a community college, and a transformation of downtown slums into office buildings and broad plazas. The Press has appealed to Cleveland's 40-odd ethnic groups by sending a "nationalities editor" abroad to file stories on Clevelanders' relatives still living in the old country. And editors take turns manning newsroom phones to answer readers' queries on everything from how to change a diaper to how to call an ambulance.

Growing up in Cleveland, Seltzer did not have any particular reason to like his city. His father, a carpenter who wrote 49 Western novels in his spare time, was almost penniless. Louis had to quit school in the seventh grade to take a job as office boy for the now vanished Cleveland Leader. Within a year, he was writing his own light Sunday column, "By Luee, The Offis Boy." But at 15 he was already a has-been. His city editor fired him and told him he was not fit for journalism.

"Luee" disagreed, and a year later he landed a job with the Press by offering to work for a week without pay. He moved up fast. By 17, he felt secure enough to marry Marion, whom he had discovered playing a piano in a silent-movie house (Marion, however, had to put up the 750 for a marriage license). By 19, Seltzer had become the paper's city editor.

Change-minded from the beginning, he made the Press a less hectic, haphazard operation. He halved the number of editions from 16 to eight, taught reporters how to compress their coverage. He cut down on violence and crime stories, hired specialists so that a "reporter would not have to be a doctor one hour, a lawyer the next, and an engineer the following." And he never stopped making changes. Only three months ago he cut the front page from eight to five columns and put in more white space for easier reading. "This newspaper does not stand still," he said. "It's in a continual state of ferment."

An Eye for the Gut. It may have to ferment all the faster these days, now that the Cleveland Plain Dealer is closing the circulation gap--370,499 for the Plain Dealer to 370,759 for the Press. As a morning paper, the Plain Dealer has a built-in advantage over the afternoon Press with its tougher distribution problems. And on top of that, the Plain Dealer has been picking up spark from Publisher Tom Vail, 39, who is running some stinging and effective exposes and crisp editorials. Vail has hired 33 new editorial staffers in the past year alone.

Luckily, Seltzer has a replacement whom he has groomed to fill his shoes. Thomas Boardman, 46, joined the Press as a copy boy in 1939, rose to become chief editorial writer. He plans no major changes at the Press, and staffers welcome him. Says one: "He's a fast, lucid writer, a shirtsleeves editor, a heavy smoker, a good drinker and an excellent companion. He can see right into the gut of any situation."

As for Seltzer, he plans to stay busy in retirement. He is ready to start writing a book that he hopes will be a "definitive treatment of the American scene over the last half-century." After that, he is not so sure. "My mind is restless," he says. "Mrs. Seltzer used to accompany me everywhere. But her passing and this retirement mean a whole re-charting of my life." But whatever Seltzer turns to, no one expects him to leave Cleveland, or love it any less.

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