U.S. Newspaper Publishers Meet to Relax, Talk, Work
The 104th annual meeting of the American Newspaper Publishers Assn. was launched with parties Sunday night to help the country’s 1,200-plus newspaper publishers get a jump start on the week’s more formal convention concerns. Approximately 2,000 registrants and their spouses are in town for the ANPA’s meeting.
“On balance, I pay more attention in the shank of the evening than in the early part of the day,” allowed Stewart Bryan, publisher of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Richmond News Leader in Virginia, who was wading through the crowd at Parade magazine’s cocktail bash at the Century Plaza Hotel Tower, where guests received coasters depicting scenes of Beverly Hills. The crowd included New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Parade publisher Carlo Vittorini and Donald Newhouse, president, and Si Newhouse, chairman, of Advance Publications, which publishes Parade.
There were no favors, but a barker announced that there were “24 different types of food,” plus entertainment by the Ink Spots at Goss Newspaper Products’ gathering down the corridor at the Century Plaza Hotel. Among the guests were Sulzberger, Washington Post publisher Donald Graham and Erwin Potts, president of McClatchy Newspapers.
A few blocks away at the Twenty/20 club, Gannett Co. Inc. which publishes USA Today among other papers, hosted a reception for more than 1,000 guests, including Katharine Graham of the Washington Post, columnist Carl Rowan, Louis Boccardi of Associated Press and Valerie Salembier of the New York Post.
For Jim Terrill, president of Smurfit Newsprint, whose company hosted a reception at Jimmy’s restaurant for 160 guests including James Ottaway of Dow Jones, Homer Taylor of Knight-Ridder, Erwin Potts and Richard Diamond of Advance Publications, this was a chance to “get things rolling in a relaxed atmosphere, get things off to a good start for a good week.”
Smurfit rolled out a lavish buffet of lobster, shrimp and caviar, as well as rolling in a few celebs, including Veronica Hamel, Wayne Rogers, John Forsythe and Lloyd Bridges, who plays an editor on ABC’s “Capitol News.”
