Dorothy Schiff, Ex-Post Publisher, Dies

Dorothy Schiff, the heiress who molded the historic New York Post into one of the nation’s most liberal dailies during her 37 years at its helm, died of cancer today. She was 86.

Peter Faris, a vice president at the Post, said Schiff died at her Manhattan home. She had been sick since May.

The Post, Schiff once said, advocated “honest unionism, social reform and humane government programs.” Her paper was a middle-class tabloid, packed with columns and features, restrained only by Schiff’s legendary tight fist.

The Post is the oldest continuously published newspaper in America, first published by Alexander Hamilton in 1801, and was one of the few metropolitan newspapers owned by a woman.

She was credited with saving the Post when she broke with other publishers during a long newspaper strike in 1963 and resumed publishing under the old contract. The paper gained circulation during that period, and within a few years became the city’s only afternoon paper.

“Often voted least likely to succeed in New York’s competitive journalistic climate, she outmaneuvered such moneyed rivals as Hearst’s Journal-American, Scripps-Howard’s World Telegram and Sun, and John Hay Whitney’s Herald Tribune, and in the end outlasted them,” noted Newsweek.

On Nov. 19, 1976, after years of turning down potential buyers, she sold the Post to media magnate Rupert Murdoch, reportedly for $31 million. Murdoch transformed the Post into a racier and more politically conservative tabloid before selling it to real estate developer Peter S. Kalikow last year.

Schiff’s grandfather was financier Jacob Schiff, a founder of the Kuhn, Loeb banking house and a prominent philanthropist.

Her four marriages ended in divorce. Her first husband was Richard B. W. Hall, followed by politician and editor George Backer, editor Theodor Olin Thackrey and Rudolf Sonneborn.