Round Two in Cincinnati

The Cincinnati Enquirer's City Editor Jack Cronin was at home wading through the fattest Sunday edition (354 pages) in the paper's 114-year history when the letter arrived. He read: "You have by offensive, insolent, contemptuous, defamatory, opprobrious language . . . impugned the motives, actions and conduct of the officers and directors of the newspaper and have otherwise attacked their probity and imputed improper purposes to them . . . you are hereby dismissed." It was signed "Roger Ferger," publisher of the Enquirer. Also fired by Ferger: Columnist James H. Ratliff Jr., who spearheaded the 1952 drive in which Enquirer employees raised the cash to take over their own paper.

Thus, Publisher Ferger hoped to quell the uproar over Enquirer management (TIME, Dec. 5) in which Ratliff had already been dumped as vice president and secretary of the company. But the firings,, only intensified the bitterness. At a meeting later in Cincinnati's Cox Theater, staffers sat in grim silence for 90 minutes while Ferger, 61, denied charges by Ratliff and Cronin that his own salary and bonus (1955 total: $104,699) and those of Assistant Publisher Eugene Duffield ($62,319) were excessive. Moreover, said Ferger, financial backers had urged him to insist on a ten-year contract; while he wanted the right to approve three of the five voting trustees in order to ensure "continuity of management" and "practical control." Ferger also said that Halsey, Stuart & Co., the Chicago investment firm that took $6,000,000 in Enquirer bonds and debentures, had suggested that he get options to buy Enquirer stock.

This was rebutted at a later meeting of outside stockholders representing shares worth $250,000. Ratliff produced a letter from Halsey, Stuart's President H. L. Stuart saying that 1) "the original request for a voting trust came from Mr. Ferger as a condition of him continuing as publisher," and 2) the stock-option deal was put through "without our knowledge . . . I certainly do question the moral action in devaluing the options which we had through our debentures."

At week's end, a pro-Ferger United Employees' Committee for 'Continued Success & Employee Control, led by Circulation Boss Lawrence Nash, suggested a review of top-management salaries and closer consultation between executives and staffers. Snapped Jim Ratliff: "Their platform is the one I gave my scalp for."

But editorial staffers, embittered by Ferger's firings, insisted that management's willingness to review the original charges was too little, too late. They wanted Cronin and Ratliff put back to work. "Firings may bring peace to your family," Sunday Feature Editor Charles Warnick wrote Ferger, "but not the firing of these two men. To settle the issue by force you are going to ... fire dozens of us ... until you have wiped out all semblance of loyalty to these men [who] will willingly undertake any sacrifice for the betterment of the Enquirer, an institution they believe bears a close resemblance to a deity."

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