As long as his plump World-Herald continued to get nearly three-fourths of Omaha’s newspaper revenue, cautious Publisher Henry Doorly was glad to have William Randolph Hearst’s afternoon Bee News drone about, frightening away any stronger competition. But last week when the concluding edition of the long-doomed Bee News went to press at 2:30 Tuesday afternoon, Publisher Doorly was in Chicago to hand Hearst representatives a $750,000 check for the Bee News plant and its 95,000 circulation.
End of the Bee News was also said to be the end of Mr. Hearst’s three-month “reconstruction” plan to kill three newspapers, effect other economies. In nine years the Bee News had cost Publisher Hearst nearly $7,000,000. The most expert Hearst tinkering could not save a losing proposition from Nebraska’s preference for a home-grown product.
Civil War Telegraph Operator Edward (“Little Rosie”) Rosewater started the Omaha Bee (“Industry, Frugality and Service”) in 1871 to further his dabblings in old guard Republican politics, carried the paper to national fame before his death in 1906. The politically powerful Bee began to slip under Son Victor Rosewater, did little better under millionaire Politician Nelson B. Updike who bought it in 1920, and was not helped when Updike merged it with the moribund Daily News, a onetime Scripps unit.
Born also of political hopes, the World-Herald had enjoyed a brighter financial history when Henry Doorly became its publisher-by-marriage when his father-in-law died in 1934. Spare, high-principled Senator Gilbert Monell Hitchcock was one of the group of bankers and politicians who founded the World in 1885. After its merger with the Herald in 1889 he slowly bought out his flagging partners and whipped banker-creditors who tried to dictate the paper’s policy. Under Senator Hitchcock the World-Herald became an influential organ of liberal Democracy, with William Jennings Bryan its editor for two years before his first Presidential nomination. When the new century beganPublisher Hitchcock was badly in debt, but when he died three years ago his paper was worth $8,000,000, 58% of which became the property of Son-in-Law Doorly and his family.
Much credit for that World-Herald prosperity falls to Henry Doorly, who migrated from Barbados to Nebraska as a Union Pacific surveyor, married Margaret Hitchcock in 1903. As a reporter, Mr. Doorly kept his job only because he was the publisher’s daughter’s fiance, but he struck his stride as a want-ad salesman, quickly became advertising and then business manager. In nine years the paper was in the black and since 1912 has made money every year, multiplying enemies but losing no ground when it deserted staunch Senator Hitchcock’s time-honored Democratic partisanship to oppose the New Deal in the 1936 campaign.
Up to last week the World-Herald was a 24-hour one-staff paper which kept each story up-to-the-minute but carried it through all six editions of the Morning World-Herald and all six of the Evening World-Herald. Now the World-Herald will have two separate staffs, will duplicate no items in the morning and evening editions. After the manner of the Des Moines Register & Tribune which has eyed the Omaha field and been envied in return by Publisher Doorly, the World-Herald will carry every important news service, the cream of specialized features.
Splitting the paper will add $500,000 a year to costs. Part of the increase will be salaries of the 40 Bee News employes (out of 400) who were absorbed by the World-Herald.
Success of the World-Herald’s new era depends not only on conservative Publisher Doorly (“Don’t spend something you haven’t got”) and his son Gilbert, the paper’s assistant managing editor, but also upon Publisher Doorly’s teammate, short, paunchy Pulitzer Prizewinner (1919) Editor Harvey Newbranch who writes lengthy, lucid, politically-effective editorials, dictates many of the paper’s policies and has for a son-in-law Congressman Harry Buffington Coffee.
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