Final Edition

The insistent ringing of the telephone woke George W. ("Bud") Roe, portly, red-faced managing editor of Hearst's Oakland (Calif.) Post-Enquirer, at 7 a.m. one day last week. On the line was his publisher, Ingraham Read, with an eye-opening message. Said Read: "We're closing the paper today."

For some 375 other employees of the Enquirer (circ. 72,970), the news came later, but in a manner just as startling. As the day's first edition and the paper's last rolled from the presses, a neat little announcement was pinned to the bulletin board: the paper was closing because "present costs make the decision necessary." Stunned reporters and copyreaders exchanged blank, bleak looks, then drifted aimlessly out the door and into nearby bars. There was little use in looking for jobs on other papers in Oakland and San Francisco; they were fully staffed.

While newsmen hate to see a paper fold, few tears were shed for the Enquirer even by its jobless staff. It had never been a first-rate daily. Started as a sickly semiweekly in 1886, the Enquirer was bought by Hearst in 1922 for a reputed half-million dollars. He consolidated it with the Oakland Daily Post, which he had started in 1917, banking on the industrial growth of Oakland. Oakland grew, all right, but so did the Post-Enquirer's formidable rival, Joseph Knowland's* Oakland Tribune (TIME, Aug. 14, 1939).

Only during World War II and shortly after, was Hearst able to make much progress against the highly successful Tribune. In 1946 and 1947, when the Tribune was nipped by the paper shortage, the Enquirer led it in advertising. But in 1948, the Tribune was back on top. Last year its linage was double the Enquirer's.

Last February Hearst started putting out a Sunday tabloid to buck the Sunday Tribune's 170,803 circulation, but it was a flop, and by June, the Tribune's advertising lead had jumped to three to one. To make matters worse, Hearst met rising production costs by cutting down on news coverage in the face of exhaustive, conscientious coverage by the Tribune. How much Hearst lost in Oakland, no Hearstling would say. (A healthy chunk went to cover severance pay, vacations, and two weeks' pay in lieu of notice.) But the loss was big enough so that no one was likely to start up another paper to challenge the monopoly of the Tribune.

*Father of California's Senator William F. Knowland.

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