A PLUM IN THE VALLEY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP74-00115R000300070017-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 10, 2014
• Sequence Number: 17
• Publication Date: May 8, 1964
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized
? TIME
Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/02/10: CIA-RDP74-00115R000300070017-8
IYIM V 1.-.1v-T
; swers: the San? ),>1.' News and the San
Jose MercurNr. How did those papers
get so far up' on the lists? And where
is San Jose anyway?
San Jose is in California, 60 miles
down the bay from San Francisco, and '
the Mercury and News climbed so high*
simply by being there at the right time.
Lebensraum. Neither San Jose nor
its two newspapers were going any-
where in particular 15 years ago. The
city seemed buffered from San Fran-
cisco by pastoral miles of Santa Clara
County fruit ? trees, interspersed with .
canneries. Then the space age dawned
' in a thunder of rockets, and its artisans
? moved West in quest of Lebensraum.
. ? Soon San Jose was transformed from
? a somnolent agricultural county seat .
' into a hive of technical industry. Lock- ?
? heed, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and
, United Aircraft all built big plants amid
the plum trees. By last year Santa Cla-
ra County had surpassed San Fran-
. . cisco County in population, retail sales
and annual payroll.
In 1952, prompted either by hunch
or foresight, the Ridder newspaper
- group snapped up San Jose's dailies for
what proved to be a bargain $3.5 mu-
lion. From humble origins, this chain
, ? has steadily lengthened over the years
. until it now spans the continent. It was
founded in 1895 by Herman Ridder,
who had bought the German-language
New Yorker Staats-Zeitung.
NEWSPAPERS
A Plum in the Valley
The double-page ad in the New York
Times posed two flat-footed questions:
"What Evening Newspaper Leads the
Nation in Total Advertising Linage??
and "What Morning Newspaper Ranks
Sixth in the Nation in Total Advertising
Linage?" Readers who scanned the ta-
bles printed below must have done a
double take when they saw the an-
?
* The top ten in advertising 1Mage:
MORNING
Los Angeles Times
Miami Herald ?
Washington Post '
Chicago Tribune
Phoenix Republic
San Jose Mercury ?
New Orleans Times.
Picayune
New York Times
Orlando Sentinel
Cleveland Plain Dealer
EVENING
San Jose News :
Phoenix Gazette ;
Fort Lauderdale i
News
Houston Chronicle
Milwaukee Journal
Montreal La Presse
Detroit News
Cleveland Press !
Montreal Star , !
Toronto Star
TED STRESHINSKT
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JOSEPH RIDDER
? 't
? .
MERCURY & NEWS PLANT IN DOWNTOWN SAN JOSE ?
Not newspapers, but. catalogues.
Laissez Faire. Herman Ridder was;
less interested in earning Y..liche in
journalism's record book than.'in pro-
viding newspapers for the 'profit of his
male descendants. Today, theceare 21.
Ridders to work the chain, if7fiiiiire that ,
neatly corresponds with the number of
Ridder newspapers. The papers vary in ;
size from the Aberdeen, S. Dak., Amer-
ican-News (circ. 21,000) to the St..
Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch (227,-
000 combined). But they all have one
thing in common: a Herman Ridder
heir at the helm.
The Ridder in San Jose is Grandson !
Joseph B., 44, who went West after
the acquisition, applied the laissez-faire
Ridder formula, and still cannot quite
believe in his luck. Like all Ridder
newspapers, Joseph's pair are run as if
the others did not exist. The last San ;
Jose newspaper crusade petered out tenl.
years ago, after the City built the new ;
civic center that its two dailies had
plumped for. By then the boom was ,
well under way, and about all Grandson
Joseph had to do was let it boom.
Daily circulation more than doubled,
' to 153,606. So did advertising. The
time came when the groaning presses'
could handle no more, and the Mercury
and the News reluctantly turned away
ads. "We don't have newspapers here,"
says Circulation Manager Arvey
Drown. "We've got catalogues."
Publisher Joe Ridder finds San Jose's ;
growth enormously stimulating. "I'vc
done everything to get the population
here, and new industry too," he said
last week, happily reflecting on the
boom. As a journalist, he also feels chal-
lenged. What is his greatest problem?
; Joe Ridder knows the answer to that
one. "Increase circulation," he says.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/02/10: CIA-RDP74-00115R000300070017-8