JOURNALIST TO CO-WRITE PALEY BOOK

The much-rumored autobiography of 84-year-old communications titan William S. Paley will be co-written with San Francisco investigative journalist David Harris and will be published “later this decade,” Bantam Books Inc., announced here Wednesday.

As yet untitled, the autobiography of the founder of the Columbia Broadcasting System, now CBS Inc., will be published in the United States and Canada as a Bantam Books Hardcover.

An earlier Paley memoir, “As It Happened,” was published by Doubleday in 1979, three years before Paley announced his resignation as chairman of the board of CBS. That book, however, “was in no way intended as a full-scale autobiography,” Paley said in an official statement. He explained that he was undertaking the new book because “I feel the time has come to reveal many of the things I could not then say.”

And he added, “I’m encouraging my collaborator to put me through a rigorous retrospective in the expectation that the book that will emerge will be a very personal and comprehensive chronicle of my life and times.”

The forthcoming volume, said Paley, “is the only account of my life in which I will participate.”

The potential scope of Paley’s book, said Linda Grey, Bantam vice president, publisher and editor-in-chief, was in large part what made it so alluring.

“There is no one else who can tell this story,” Grey said. “It is a story that spans decades, and it is important in several areas--communications and broadcasting, business, the arts, as well as in terms of Mr. Paley’s contributions to American culture.

“Just as (Chrysler Chairman) Lee Iacocca and (test pilot) Chuck Yeager are the personifications of achievement in their respective fields,” Grey continued, “so, too, is William Paley. The autobiography will encompass the private facets of Mr. Paley, the man, as well as the extraordinary contributions of Mr. Paley, the public figure. . . . It will be a compelling look at our times through the eyes of one of this century’s most interesting and important figures.”

Grey said Paley will write “in detail” about “the many people who have touched upon his life,” a list that ranges from Presidents Hoover, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon to Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Lucille Ball and Jack Benny.

“It’s a remarkable opportunity to write about the 20th Century,” Harris said. “Here’s a guy who has been at the crossroads of power and culture for the last 60 years.”

A frequent contributor to the New York Times magazine, Harris is the author of two previous books of nonfiction and a novel. His new book, “The League” (Bantam Books Hardcover), examining the internal power struggles of the National Football League, will be published this fall.

Harris said the “blank check to look at anything” that Paley had given him was one reason he agreed to collaborate with the communications magnate.

“I’m not the kind of writer who normally shares a byline with anybody,” Harris said. “This will be the first and last time I ever do it. I had never even considered this as an option until all of a sudden this fell into my lap.”

In keeping with his company’s policy, Bantam Books Vice President Stuart Applebaum would say only that the advance for the Paley book was “substantial.”