New Boss for Free Press

Jack Knight is a go-getting publisher who doesn't believe in newspaper chains, but seems to be acquiring one. In 1933 he inherited the Akron Beacon-Journal from his father. In 1937 he bought the Miami Herald. Last week John Shively Knight acquired his third going paper, the log-year-old Detroit Free Press, Michigan's biggest morning newspaper (circ. 296,-047). The purchase price, though known to be over $3,000,000, remained secret.

Bargaining began as early as last January, though shrewd, autocratic, old Ed Stair, owner of the Free Press, prevaricated last month, equivocated last week, wound up--an hour before papers were signed--by confessing he was "thinking about taking in Mr. Knight as a partner." This meant that Knight acquired the stock of the paper, but 81-year-old Ed Stair remained as chairman of a board of directors, a majority of whom represented the new owner. For incisive, forthright Publisher Knight there was no hemming & hawing. To the assembled editorial staff announced: "I am contemplating no changes in the editorial department. What will be done in the other departments only time can tell."

Editorial director for the Free Press's arch-conservative Republican policy has been Malcolm Wallace Bingay, who will probably stay on as a columnist though Detroiters gagged that his column's name would be changed from "Good Morning" to "Good Night." As for the rest, 42 of them scrambled to join the Newspaper Guild, which got its first contract the day before Knight took over.

Vigorous, young (45), excellent golfer (70s) and able dice shaker, Knight has worked as heir or owner in nearly every part of the Beacon-Journal plant. Since he dislikes chain journalism's uniformity, Publisher Knight tries to give each of his papers a personality of its own, favors much local news. His Miami paper is Democratic, his Akron paper Independent. During Akron's big strike in 1936, he splashed a strongly worded Page One editorial at a vigilante group which wanted to smash the picket line and open the plant, rode out the protests, saw the strike settled two weeks later. As an active head of the Free Press he plans to nurse it gently from a rock-ribbed, standpat Republicanism to a more Independent demeanor, for he likes to be free to jump in any political direction, favors the Third Term in a mild way.

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