From Our Archive
March 22, 1998
Former
Scripps
chief Jack R.
Howard dead at 87
CINCINNATI -- Jack R.
Howard, a pioneer in the broadcast
industry and heir to one of the great names in American
newspapering, died Sunday, March 22, at 7:15 a.m. in his New
York City home. He was 87. The cause of death was pulmonary
failure.
Howard's journalism
career spanned 48 years from work as a summer copy aide in
1928 to retirement in 1976 as president and general editorial
manager of The E.W. Scripps Company.
"Jack was
determined to put his imprint on the company and he did it in
the broadcasting area," said William R. Burleigh, president
and chief executive officer of The E.W. Scripps Company. "What
we see today in our broadcasting division is the Jack Howard
legacy to Scripps Howard."
Added Lawrence A.
Leser, chairman of the board for The E.W. Scripps company,
"His biggest attribute was creating Scripps Howard
Broadcasting. He put us into radio and later television."
Jack was the son of the legendary Roy W. Howard, who
built United Press into a worldwide wire service and through
his association with E.W. Scripps became the "Howard" in the
Scripps Howard concern.
Born Aug. 31, 1910
in his parents' house on Upper Broadway in Manhattan, N.Y., he
was named Jack because that had been his father's nickname as
a young man.
JRH seemed destined
to live a life in the public eye. His mother, Margaret Rohe
Howard, had been a writer of verse, a reporter and an actress
on Broadway and the London stage. His aunt, Alice Rohe, was an
internationally distinguished reporter.
He attended the
Phillips Exeter Academy, where he served as business manager
of The Exonian, the school newspaper, and coxswain for the
crew team. In 1928, he joined United Press to cover the
Olympics in Amsterdam, working his passage there by waiting on
tables in the steerage class of the Liner SS Levithan.
He then attended Yale University and worked for the
Yale Daily News until he earned his degree in 1932. Upon
graduation, Jack Howard began his newspaper career. He worked
as a reporter and copy editor on the Japan Advertiser in Tokyo
and the Shanghai Evening Post in China. He also worked as a
reporter for UP in Manchuria.
He returned to the United States and joined the Scripps
Howard newspaper group as a copy editor on The Indianapolis
Times. After a stint as a courthouse reporter, he moved to
Washington, D.C., and The Washington Daily News, where he rose
from police reporter to telegraph editor.
Curiously, for an
individual who was to have such influence on journalism, this
mid-level slot was his highest position on the editorial side
of newspapers.
And it was here
Howard's career began to diverge from the prescribed path.
"His one obsession," his father said of Jack, "is not to be
Roy Howard, Jr." The elder Howard was uninterested, even
hostile to, the burgeoning new field of radio. The young
Howard, showing a certain stubbornness and independence, was
fascinated.
In 1935, Scripps
Howard bought its first radio station, WCPO in Cincinnati; in
1936, Howard left Washington to go to work for the company's
second radio station, KNOX in Knoxville, Tenn. There, Howard
set out to learn the radio business from the ground
up.
In 1937, Howard moved to New York to become president
of the two-station operation that, under his aegis, would
eventually grow into a division that now includes nine
television stations. TV station KJRH in Tulsa carries Jack
Howard's initials.
Although
preoccupied with broadcast, Howard did one lasting favor for
the company's newspaper division in particular and journalism
in general. In 1940, Roy Howard was determined to close a
faltering Denver newspaper. Jack Howard intervened to reverse
that decision and remade the paper as a tabloid. Today, the
Rocky Mountain News is Greater Denver's most-read newspaper
and one of the largest dailies in the
country.
"The tabloid-sized
newspaper in Denver was a genius move," said Burleigh. "
Jack Howard
was the author of the tabloid Rocky Mountain News."
Howard served in
the Navy during World War II, spending much of his time in
Australia. Later, as a lieutenant and intelligence officer
aboard the destroyer USS Fletcher for eight months, he saw
action in and around the Philippines, including the landings
at Leyte and Lingayen Gulf. He was part of a task force that
was instrumental in the capture of an island in the Tokyo Bay
area, for which he received a naval citation. Later, he was
transferred to the USS Oakland for what would have been the
invasion of the Japanese mainland. In 1945, after the
surrender, he took part in the occupation of Yokosuka Naval
Base. Howard retired from the navy as a Lieutenant Commander
and returned to civilian life in 1946.
That year, Howard
was elected executive vice president of The E.W. Scripps
Company, the holding company for the newspaper, broadcast and
syndication subsidiaries and UP. In 1953, Jack succeeded his
father, Roy W., as president, a position he held until his
retirement in 1976. He helped to found and later served as
president of the Scripps Howard Foundation, which fosters
excellence in journalism through scholarships and a nationally
acclaimed journalism award program. For a time, he also served
as a successor to The E.W. Scripps Trust.
Even after his
retirement, he remained a director and chairman of the
executive committee of The E.W. Scripps Company and continued
as president and later chairman of the board of Scripps Howard
Broadcasting Company, which he had served as president since
1937 in its earliest days as Continental Broadcasting Company.
"He was very much highly regarded by the people who
worked for him," said Charles E. Scripps, chairman of The E.W.
Scripps Company Executive Committee. "I could almost say loved
by the people who worked for him." He was active in numerous
charities, including the Wildlife Preservation Trust
International and the Population Institute of Washington,
D.C.; however, his primary interest was supporting scholarship
students at his Phillips Exeter alma mater, for which he'd
served as alumni president and received the distinguished
alumnus award in 1990.
Howard also was
active in his industry's professional associations as a member
of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, a former board
member of the American Newspaper Publishers Association and a
former president of the Inter American Press Association.
In 1934, Howard married Barbara Balfe of New York City.
The couple had two children, Pamela Howard of New York and
Michael Balfe Howard of Denver, Colo. Barbara Howard died in
1962. In 1964, Howard married Eleanor Sallee Harris, a
free-lance magazine writer who died in October 1997.
Howard had a lively interest in people and events. He
prided himself on knowing his company intimately. In a typical
gesture, he amiably waved aside a newly hired reporter's
attempt to introduce himself, addressing the reporter by name
and saying in his distinct, high-pitched voice, "Of course, of
course, I know who the hell you are."
Much of his time
after his retirement from active management of The E.W.
Scripps Company was spent involved in local politics of Centre
Island, N.Y. For more than a decade, Howard served as town
trustee. His son Michael recalls, "He considered himself a
'country-style person' and established his legal residence on
Centre Island on the north shore of Long Island."
If he had an a vocational passion, it would have been
the outdoors in general and salmon fishing in particular. He
was a founding member and partner of Le Club Watchichou on the
north shore of Quebec, and had been an ardent Atlantic fly
fisherman virtually all of his adult life.
Howard's other great interest was the Bohemian Club of
San Francisco. He attended the club's summer encampment every
year from 1946 to 1992, until illness forced him to become an
inactive member. Over the years, his campmates at Cave Man
Camp included his father and his son, Lowell Thomas, Capt.
Eddie Rickenbacker and Richard M. Nixon.
Jack Howard
maintained throughout his life a loyalty and fondness for The
E.W. Scripps Company and members of the Scripps family. Says
Michael Howard, "In the very best sense, he was a company man
to the very end."
In addition to his
two children, he leaves seven grandchildren and a sister, Jane
Howard Perkins.
A private funeral
service was handled by the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in
Manhattan.
The family asks
that memorials be directed to the Scripps Howard Foundation,
P.O. Box 640186, Cincinnati, OH 45264-0186, or Phillips Exeter
Academy, 20 Main St., Exeter, N.H. 03833.
Contact: Sue Porter, The E.W. Scripps Company, 513-977-3030