7 days Archive

Publisher Eugene C. Pulliam chatted up staffers' children at the company's annual picnic in 1959 at the Fourth Estate, formerly the company's employee recreation area, on the Northeastside. -- 1959 Star file photo   Special section • Star Century: 100 years of The Indianapolis Star

Eugene C. Pulliam didn't invent The Indianapolis Star.

He reinvented it.

From the day he bought The Star in 1944, he built the slumbering morning paper into the state's largest newspaper and stamped it with his strong persona.

Maybe it was genetic.

Pulliam was the son of a Kansas minister. And he used not just the editorial page, but the front page, as his pulpit.

Eugene C. Pulliam was never content to be a neutral observer, dispassionately chronicling the city's progress.

He was a player.

"He was undeniably the most powerful individual in the state," said Gordon St. Angelo, who led the Indiana Democratic Party from 1964 to 1974.

Pulliam, St. Angelo said, could influence who won elections and the selection of party nominees.

"Honestly, I think it was good. Because I don't remember him ever marshaling that power for himself."

In 1952, Pulliam became a Republican state and national convention delegate -- a role that today would be considered an outrageous breach of ethics.

It showed both Pulliam's influence and his independence. While almost all of the Indiana delegates backed Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio, Pulliam supported a fellow Kansan he'd come to consider a friend -- Army Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

To his employees, Pulliam was "the Boss" or "the Old Man." To Myrta Pulliam, he was "Grampy." And, she said, he was a man who defied easy labels.

"That's a misnomer, that he was conservative," Myrta Pulliam said. "It's not conservative to have front-page editorials."

And he did. Lots of them, usually railing against government power.

Pulliam's conservative dread of a too-strong federal government and communism collided in the 1950s.

When red-baiting U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., questioned a New York Post editor about his communist ties, Pulliam came down on the side of a free press.

He told his son, Eugene S. Pulliam, to sign an American Society of Newspaper Editors and Publishers' Freedom of Information Committee report chastising McCarthy -- he was one of only four of the 11 committee members who did.

Pulliam defied predictability. He was a friend and supporter of one of the most liberal Democrats ever: Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Jack Valenti, now the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, was special assistant to President Johnson in the 1960s. He dates the true friendship to 1964, when Johnson was president and Pulliam called Valenti at the White House to ask if the president would speak to a meeting of newspaper publishers.

"The president knew who he was. I told him, 'He's probably the most conservative fellow in the country. He's probably not going to vote for you or endorse you. But you have nothing to lose.' "

In fact, he gained a lot.

That year, Johnson ran for the presidency against U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz. -- a politician Pulliam, who owned newspapers in Arizona, had helped launch.

But Pulliam's newspapers gave only tepid support to Goldwater. When Johnson came to Indianapolis, Valenti said, he was greeted with a front-page editorial and cartoon warmly welcoming him.

In the 1968 election, however, Pulliam's involvement in presidential politics was far more vitriolic.

Johnson had dropped out of the race, and Democratic Gov. Roger D. Branigin was on Indiana's ballot, running as a "favorite son" whose delegates could be handed over to Johnson if he got back in, or to another candidate.

Pulliam despised U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y. Banners were stripped across the front page, urging people to vote for Branigin.

On April 5, 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. In "Publisher Gene Pulliam, Last of the Newspaper Titans," author Russell Pulliam said his grandfather called the civil rights leader "a rabble-rouser" and demanded that the story on the assassination go at the bottom of the page.

Eugene C. Pulliam's son, Eugene S. Pulliam, intervened, and the story was moved to the top. But the elder Pulliam prevailed in one accompanying story. Kennedy was in Indianapolis when news of King's assassination broke and addressed a shocked, mostly black crowd near 17th Street and Broadway. His appearance was buried in a story headlined, "Young Hoosiers Back 'Favorite Son' Branigin."

The Pulliam stamp ended at the century's end. On June 28, 2000, the Pulliam newspapers were sold to the Gannett Co.

One condition of the sale was that Russell Pulliam remain as an associate editor and columnist on the editorial page -- as much to ensure a conservative voice as a Pulliam presence.

He has six children, and one, 22-year-old Daniel, majored in journalism at Butler University.

Will they someday ensure the Pulliam name continues at The Star?

"Who knows?" said their aunt, Myrta Pulliam, who now is director of special projects at The Star. But she added of her grandfather: "He'd really like that."

Call Star reporter Mary Beth Schneider at 1-317-615-2382.