Obituaries : Barry Bingham Sr.; Once Ran Kentucky Media Empire

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Barry Bingham Sr., who inherited a media empire that he built into a national force but then dismantled it to stifle family bickering, died at his home Monday at age 82.

The former owner and publisher of the Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times, papers that dominated Kentucky life for half a century, had learned last year that he had a brain tumor.

Bingham’s physician, Dr. William A. Blodgett, said his patient had been in a coma for nine days before he died.

Bingham’s newspapers won eight Pulitzer Prizes over nearly seven decades. In 1986, after a family stock battle, he decided that the newspapers and TV and radio stations he had shepherded since the 1930s would be better served by outside interests. He sold them to the Gannett Co., which folded the Times into the Courier-Journal.

‘World-Class Man’

Former Gov. Bert Combs said that Bingham had “more to do with the shape of this state than any person I can think of in the past half-century.”

“He was a world-class man and certainly he will be missed both in the community and in the world of journalism,” said George Gill, who became publisher of the Courier-Journal after the Bingham family sold the newspapers to Gannett in 1986. “He was a fine editor and a fine gentleman.”

Bingham’s family empire began tottering in 1984 after Barry Bingham Jr. tried to force his sister and other women family members off the board of directors to bring in outside management experts. They refused and the squabble over money and control began.

Bingham Sr. explained that he and his wife, Mary, had been unable to find “a solution to this problem that would be satisfactory and fair to everybody.”

The family divided an estimated $435.8 million from sale of the two newspapers, two radio stations, a TV station and two other media outlets.

“There were no winners,” he said after the sale.

Coincidental to the onset of his illness was another battle--this one unsuccessful--over the release of a book about his father, Judge Robert Worth Bingham, who acquired the newspapers in 1918 with a $5-million inheritance from his second wife.

Serious Allegation

The book alleged that Judge Bingham contributed to his second wife’s death by failing to get her proper medical attention and by drugging her in an effort to persuade her to change her will in his favor.

Macmillan Publishing Co. had dropped the book project after Bingham Sr. supplied a 5-inch thick, 8-pound memorandum listing what he claimed were 160 misstatements of fact by author David Chandler. But last year Crown Publishing Co. published the book after making what it called insignificant changes.

A Harvard graduate and aspiring novelist who joined the family business as a police reporter, Bingham took control of the media empire in 1933 when his father was appointed ambassador to Great Britain by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Bingham’s son, Barry Jr., was appointed editor and publisher in 1971 and Bingham became chairman.

Judge Bingham had launched WHAS-AM radio in 1922 and later started Standard Gravure, which prints Sunday magazine and advertising supplements. Bingham Sr. set up WHAS-TV in 1950 and Bingham Jr. was involved in opening WAMZ-FM.

The elder Bingham’s surprise announcement that he was putting the newspapers up for sale was criticized by Barry Jr. as “a betrayal of the traditions and principles which I have sought to perpetuate.”

“Had I thought in the early 1960s,” he continued, “that my career would be abbreviated by my parents in this summary way, I would have dedicated my life’s work to other enterprises.”

And, in the last editorial column published before Gannett assumed control, Bingham Jr. wrote, “If money can bring happiness, there should be no shortage of it in this family riven by disagreement and distrust.”