Dave Kindred, Dean Eagle, Earl Cox and Earl Ruby in the Courier Journal and Times Sports Department in 1968.
Never in the history of newspapers has there been a week like the recent upheaval that saw The Washington Post and The Boston Globe sold for fractions of what they would have been worth a year or two ago.
Those two behemoths are the most recent papers that were all but given away.
Donald Graham was the reigning member of the ownership Post family,
This story about Graham isn’t funny, but sad as can be. I learned about him at the Columbia University American Press Institute.
His mother insisted that Graham be educated so that eventually he could take the reins of The Post and its slew of TV stations.
But her son didn’t want to be at the top. All he wanted to be was a cop! Yes, a policeman.
And for a short time he did work as a police officer. I guess he saw his first paycheck and decided that being a publisher wouldn’t be a bad job after all.
Many of my long-time friends ask me how I feel each time my former paper, The Courier-Journal, is hit by another round of employee cuts.
I tell them that I don’t let it get me down, even when my employee friends are let go. I just take to my bed and try to remember the good old Bingham days when times were so flush that a Pulitzer prize winner didn’t do much more than wander through the newsroom with a cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.
The Binghams yearned desperately for a Pulitzer winner and John Fetterman won one for them.
Barry Bingham Jr. saw the future of what is happening now and he told us about it.
The most hurtful thing of all, a Bingham family member told me recently, is that Courier-Journal money now goes out of town instead of helping Louisville.
The Binghams took good care of their family, of course, but also their retired employees through pensions and medical insurance.
This is personal, but it will show you what kind of people the Binghams were.
A member of my family was having serious eye trouble. Barry Sr. learned about it and called me to his office. He said that other family members had been sent to an eye clinic in Philadelphia (“the nation’s best)†and he offered to send my relative at C-J expense.
Another time, during a Harvard Club Christmas gathering, Mr. Bingham called during the party and asked, “Earl, why didn’t you tell me that Ellen is going to Harvard? And can you come to my office Monday morning?â€
I said something stupid, “Mr. Bingham, I think I can make it.â€
So Monday morning found me sitting across from the publisher, who asked, “Earl, would it offend you if I helped send Ellen to Havard?â€
That’s the kind of people the Binghams were.
