From Our Archive
March 22, 1998
Jack Rohe Howard was the only son of Roy W. Howard -- the "Howard" in Scripps Howard. He was destined to follow in his father's legendary footsteps. Journalism was clearly in his blood. His mother, Margaret Rohe Howard was a writer of verse, a reporter and an actress on Broadway and the London stage. His aunt, Alice Rohe, was an internationally distinguished reporter.
During college vacations from Yale, Jack Howard worked at various jobs for United Press in London, New York and Paris. After graduation he worked as a reporter for the Japan Advertiser in Tokyo and the Shanghai Evening Post in China and UP in Manchuria. He returned to the states to work on the copy desk of The Indianapolis Times and then at the Washington Daily News.
He began his broadcasting career at WNOX in Knoxville in 1936 and became president of Scripps Howard Broadcasting Company in 1937. Two years later, he assumed the additional responsibilities of assistant executive editor of Scripps Howard Newspapers.
In 1953, he succeeded his father as president of The E.W. Scripps Company while retaining the presidency of Scripps Howard Broadcasting Company. At 65, he resigned as president of the two companies but continued as chairman of the broadcasting company and as a director of The E.W. Scripps Company.
From 1963-68, he was president of Scripps Howard Foundation. Jack Howard has a son, Michael. His daughter, Pamela, is a trustee of Scripps Howard Foundation. On his death in 1998 at age 87, Jack R. Howard left a bequest to the Foundation in excess of $7 million.
A
gentleman of the press
JRH Legacy: Good Taste,
Good Journalism
By Dan K. Thomasson
In an era when journalism is being excoriated by allegations of sensationalism at nearly every level, we are suddenly and sadly reminded with the death of Jack R. Howard that there was a time when those among us could be described as "gentlemen" of the press.
Jack Howard or JRH or just plain "Jack" to the reporters and editors and business managers who labored for and with him for 50 years was nothing if not a "gentleman." An intimate once cracked that if you looked up the definition of that salutation in the dictionary "you would find a picture of Jack."
Courtly and suave and quick to laugh, he managed newspapers, syndicates, wire services and broadcast stations, with his partner Charles E. Scripps, with the same devotion to good taste and propriety with which he conducted his own life.
It is difficult now, when watching the tawdry exploitation shows on television, to realize there was a time when the most sensational thing on radio probably was a livestock report about "suckling" pigs. There was no national debate over salacious material; it didn't exist on radio or in the movies on in the early days of television. Why?
Well, it was a different era with different moral values. But mainly, I think, we were spared this muck because men like Howard, who more than 60 years ago dragged the nation's then-largest newspaper organization into broadcasting, exercised a self discipline that simply doesn't exist now.
"If I were emperor," Howard said to me once, "I wouldn't off the heads of guys like Howard Stern but the guys who are making money off of them and inflicting this offensive garbage on us."
With the advent of the Internet as a major communications player in our lives, the return to decency probably will never occur.
The erosion of journalistic values will only get worse before it gets better. The publicity given such untrained, irresponsible gossip mongers as Matt Drudge (it rhymes with sludge) will just encourage more of the same.
Howard and others decided early on that their stations should maintain the same level of accuracy and decency and good taste that they had demanded from their newspapers. They were concerned that the highly competitive atmosphere of broadcast news would undercut the quality of journalism.
So at 87, it probably was time for Jack Howard, worn out by debilitating illness the last few years, to move on. As he remarked when his father, the renowned Roy W. Howard died, "It was the only thing he hadn't done."
It really wasn't his world anymore, but he left it with a legacy of decency and sense of propriety that Scripps Howard stations still maintain. One couldn't have a better model for conducting business or life.
Dan K. Thomasson,
retired, vice president/news for The E.W. Scripps Company,
editor of Scripps Howard News Service and former trustee of
the Scripps Howard Foundation.