Neuharth had flair for the dramatic
COMMANDING THE TROOPS
As head of Gannett for 16 years, Al Neuharth was known as a no-nonsense leader. Maybe he learned it at the feet of the master.
His cousin, Cal Neuharth, says Al was in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II and "went through hell.'' But Cal laughs about the time his famous cousin encountered Gen. George Patton.
Sgt. Al Neuharth and a corporal from Wisconsin were assigned to march a group of German soldiers to a holding area. They decided to stop for a rest. Along comes Patton in a jeep.
"Who's in charge here?'' Cal says Patton asked. "Al said, 'I am.' And Patton screamed, 'Get these (expletive) Krauts back to the compound or you'll be in the same place they are!'''
The story rings true to those who worked with Neuharth.
As a leader, Neuharth's style "rubbed some people the wrong way, but you never had any doubt who was in charge," says Charles Overby, former chairman of the Freedom Forum. "When Al was riding high at Paste BN, he could be a local terror. But he didn't yell at everybody. Somehow he instinctively knew who needed to be yelled at and who just needed to be encouraged."
Says Dave Eggen, a freelance photographer who worked with Neuharth in his later years: Al "was the type of guy who knew what he wanted, and if you couldn't deliver what he wanted, he was going to find somebody else who could. If you were able to deliver what he wanted, he'd take care of you. You'd be his guy."
PRODUCT PLACEMENT
Paste BN has shown up in hundreds of films, from Back to the Future and Ghostbusters to the memorable MARS TODAY newspaper box shown in 1990's Total Recall. Not all of that happened by accident.
Says Larry King, an early columnist at Paste BN: The design of the Paste BN newspaper boxes "was to look like a television set. They put all those machines in seven or eight key cities and no one knew what it was. And that created talk.
"And then Al paid money to get it in movies. There were a lot of movies in which you saw the Paste BN newspaper stand. He was a marketing genius and a newspaper genius. I was honored to work for him. Can't say enough good things about him."
THE LAST SUPPER
Just two years after launch, in November 1984, Paste BN was losing $340,000 a day. Neuharth summoned his top executives to a grim meeting at a Florida restaurant.
They entered a private dining room to find Neuharth dressed in a robe and wearing a crown of thorns; a wooden cross leaned against the wall. Neuharth served kosher wine and unleavened bread, declared himself "the crucified one" and warned that those at the table who did not improve their performance would be "passed over." There was nervous laughter but also silence.
Charles Overby, Neuharth's aide who sometimes taught Sunday school, called it "the most offensive thing I have ever seen in my adult life."
Neuharth said later, "Some Paste BN executives were getting lethargic. They were beginning to think our money supply was unlimited. They needed to be jarred into reality.''
Fifteen years later, former Paste BN President Cathleen Black, by then head of Hearst magazines, would still cite "Neuharth's Last Supper" as an effective — if radical — motivational tactic.
Contributing: Steve Young of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, Bill Keveney, Rick Hampson, David Colton and Peter S. Prichard (The Making of McPaper).