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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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Session:         Page of 824

paper that you want to use, that you have to use for editorial content. Also, in peace time, you try to maximize profits. In war time, maximizing profits is a near impossibility because you've got a 90% tax anyway so all you're going to keep is 10%. In war time, there's not only a freeze on prices but also on salaries, so you can't reward the way you would like to so you try to devise other ways of rewarding those who have extreme merit. Everything is turned upside-down, and management in that period spends most of its time coping with the upside-down situation, doing the contrary of what a management would normally do just as the advertising salesmen don't really go out and sell advertising, they try to explain to the advertiser why it is we can only accept nine pages instead of the thirteen pages that he wants. Of course, the advertiser, since he's paying 90% tax, wants to spend all the money in the world. So, here he is, sort of shoving the money at you, and you're saying, “Sorry, sorry old boy [laughter], can't take it.”

Q:

So making a business plan was quite different in those years?

Heiskell:

It's practically, exactly the reverse of normal circumstances. Your distribution was very difficult because while we had a priority for distribution it wasn't an A-1 priority. Obviously, troop trains or that cement going to Almagordo, or you name it, all had priority over us. Even getting the copies distributed was difficult. Fortunately, much of it was newsstand distribution and that was easier to handle because it didn't involve trains and rails. It involved trucks and, even with gas shortages,





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