The Herald Tribune

It is hard to believe that any adult who was associated with The Herald Tribune could still be alive  on Friday, only to pass away on Saturday at 93. But Ogden R. Reid, 'Editor of Storied Newspaper and a U.S. Representative.' has passed away at his home in Waccubac, New York, an exclusive hamlet in Westchester County.

A good deal of Mr. Reid's obituary is devoted to his political career, which spanned 12 years in the House of Representatives and several appointments by governors and presidents. But it's the timeline tossed out for The Herald Tribune that to me is the most interesting.

Ogden's Reid's grandfather was the editor and principal owner of the New York Tribune. His son, Ogden's father,  merged the Tribune with the New York Herald in the 1920s to form The New York Herald Tribune, the newspaper I still love, even if it did cease publication in the 1960s.

Ogden Reid was the president and editor of the paper in the 1950s. But even then, newspapers had financial trouble, and a controlling interest in The Herald Tribune was sold to John Hay Whitney in 1958. Whitney had been the ambassador to England, and had a sister Joan Payson who owned the winner of the 1969 Belmont Stakes, Stage Door Johnny, and who was instrumental in getting a National League baseball team back in New York, the Mets, The Metropolitans. Mrs. Payson owned a portion of the ball club.  They were sporting people.

But as a newspaper, The Herald Tribune had it all. Although I'd buy the Times as a teenager, I'd also buy the Herald Tribune, and liked it more. Its layout wasn't as dense, there were comics, Our Miss Peach, The Wizard of Id, B.C. editorial cartoons, and of course sports with Red Smith, who later went to to The Times when The Tribune folded in 1967.

I loved reading Dick Schaap and Walter Lippmann in the paper. The Sunday paper spawned what is still a magazine, New York. But newspapers in New York were contracting after the 114-day newspaper strike of 1962-1963. The Herald Tribune merged with the World Telegram and Sun and the Journal-American in the mid-60s to become the short lived World Journal Tribune. A New Yorker cartoon of the era depicted a newspaper delivery truck that was elongated like a stretch limo in order to be long enough to carry the name on one line: The World Journal Tribune.

 It was a long, long time ago, and I can still remember...

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