Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [136]
Buck Wingate listened doubtfully when Harry called him to explain his new plans. “I guess we should just be thankful he’s doing something other than chase girls and spend money,” he said gloomily to his father. But if he thought Harry spent money like water before, it was nothing compared to the sums he began lavishing on the Harrison Herald.
He bought a small printing plant on Mission, expanded it into the building next door and installed five brand-new presses and the latest in composing rooms and darkrooms. He cleared the three middle floors of the Harrison building for the Harrison Herald offices and ordered a bewildered Frank to find room for the displaced workers on other floors. He installed a direct private elevator to his office and had that redecorated. He hired away an editor from New York, a night-desk editor from Philly, and stole reporters and photographers and experienced compositors and printers from the other San Francisco journals. He personally designed the Herald logo, a sunrise behind a phoenix, which would appear at the top of the front page of his newspaper, and he opened branch offices in every small California city. He spent millions and he got what he wanted: the best. Now all he had to do was sell it.
On the day the first edition was being prepared, he sat in his huge editorial office in his shirtsleeves, his feet on his desk, a cigar clamped between his teeth and a green shade over his eyes, reading every story as it came off the typewriter. Before giving his approval he examined every photograph while the Herald’s real editor fumed in his cubicle, trying to make his deadline and get his paper to press. That night Harry threw a huge party at the printing plant. He filled the place with debutantes, movie stars, and playboys, and he himself pressed the button to start his gleaming presses rolling. Champagne corks popped and he watched, satisfied, as the first Harrison Herald rolled off the press.
Buck Wingate shook his head. The place was like a society jamboree, not a beat-the-deadline, kill-the-competition, hard-nosed newspaper enterprise. He surely hoped Harry knew what he was doing, but he knew it was no good giving him advice. He wouldn’t take it.
It seemed this time he was wrong. Harry worked hard. He made promotional visits to all the Herald’s offices, he gave speeches at street corners in every little town, extolling the virtues of his new one-cent tabloid, and his face appeared on a daily basis on the front page of his own newspaper. Sales of the Herald took off. ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DAILY SUBSCRIBERS AFTER ONLY ONE MONTH his headlines announced proudly. One hundred and twenty-five thousand in two months, one hundred and fifty thousand … Even if it wasn’t true, Harry thought it looked good, and besides, people always believed what they read in the papers. Yet though the Herald’s stories and pictures were as good as anybody else’s, they weren’t any better. San Franciscans already had their loyalties to their own newspapers and sales began flagging.
Harry liked to drop in at the office at night, peeling off his jacket and sipping whiskey while he pulled stories off the spike on the nightdesk, issuing them to reporters to write while the night editor glowered furiously at him. The cynical hard-nosed newspapermen mockingly called him “young Harrison Hearst,” and stories flew around San Francisco about how he couldn’t keep his hands off the women staff and wouldn’t take any backtalk from the men. “Fuck and fire, that’s all Harry knows how to do,” they said.
A new circulation war broke out. Harry’s newsboys were beaten up by hired toughs and copies of the Harrison Herald were torn and scattered to the wind. Harry vowed to get the perpetrators, but strangely, even the chief of police wasn’t able to find out who did it.
Harry went out on his publicity rounds again. He put ads in his own newspaper telling the public that the Herald was already expanding and that this was only the first in a chain of Harrison Herald newspapers