Salt Lake Tribune employees of the 1970s called it "the touch" or "the squeeze."
Several times a year, Thomas Kearns McCarthey, or "Kearns" as he was known, would get up from his small desk in classified advertising, mosey into the office of then-sports editor John Mooney and ask, some say demand, that Mooney use his influence to procure tickets to the Kentucky Derby. Or to the Rose Bowl. Or to college basketball's Final Four.
Mooney always came through.
"Mooney loved my dad and would have done anything for him," remembers Thomas Kearns McCarthey Jr., known as Tom or Tommy at the Trib , where he holds the title of deputy editor.
"He really hated it," says one of Mooney's colleagues. "You could hear Mooney screaming, 'Who do they think they are?' "
But Mooney and everyone else in the Tribune newsroom knew who the McCartheys were:
They were a branch of "the family" that owned the newspaper, descendants of fabled one-time owner Sen. Thomas Kearns. And relatives, otherwise ignored in the newsroom, were afforded certain privileges. Being an owner has its perks.
Especially for those holding 40 percent of the company stock.
Today, all of Utah is learning who the McCartheys are. Others in the extended Kearns family — scores of them — have fallen away from the senator's newspaper.
Not the McCartheys.
Indeed, the children of the late T.K. McCarthey and his widow Jane, 74, think they have a chance of owning the paper lock, stock and printing presses.
Tom, 50; his brother Phil, 48; and sister Sarah, 46, now control 80 percent of an option agreement that they claim may allow the Tribune management group they dominate to buy the Tribune in August 2002.
The family sold the paper in 1997 for stock worth $731 million. It has subsequently been owned by Tele-Communications Inc. (better known as TCI Cablevision), AT&T and now Denver-based MediaNews Group. The Deseret News, the Tribune's partner in a joint operating agreement, maintains that it must consent to any sale of the Tribune and its half of the two newspapers' publishing and distribution arm, the Newspaper Agency Corp.
Phil, for one, makes no bones about his plans.
Does he want to become the next publisher of the Salt Lake Tribune?
"Yes," he says unequivocally.
Tom, a 28-year veteran journalist at the Tribune, was once considered the heir apparent to the publisher's chair, but he says he no longer has the fire. Along with Sarah, they would take prominent roles on a board of directors. Another sister, Maureen, 41, said she also wants a role, and a third brother, Shawn, 44, now living in Seattle, could also become involved.
If the McCartheys buy the paper back, family members say they have strong opinions on the direction the state's largest daily newspaper should take.
They want to continue the aggressive coverage of the LDS Church, something they say was lacking in a previously "cozy" relationship between past publishers and the church hierarchy. Some would like to see more liberal editorial slants on education and the environment.
But Tom, Phil and their siblings must first raise the $200 million, or significantly more, needed to purchase the Tribune. If they muster the funds, it would culminate years of corporate politics that saw the McCartheys orchestrate the ouster of longtime publisher John "Jack" Gallivan, who for three decades beginning in the 1960s was one of the most influential men in Utah.
That takeover itself has some in the family organization shaking their heads in disbelief, if not downright awe.
"No one ever thought they had it in them to do what they did," said one Tribune insider.
"I'm no fan of Jack Gallivan, but what they did to him was a dirty shame, just a shame," said another.
Through more than two dozen interviews with current and former Salt Lake Tribune employees, stockholders and retirees, one thing is glaringly evident: Most underestimated the McCartheys' desire for control of the newspaper they now consider the "McCarthey legacy."
(Most sources spoke on the condition of anonymity given their current employment or ongoing business relationships with the Tribune.)
The power play has prompted many inside and out of the Salt Lake media to wonder just how the McCartheys, generally unknown outside their own family clique, managed to position themselves to become one of Utah's most powerful families.
"Who were they? They were non-entities," said one former Tribune executive. "They were invisible."
Not anymore.
Family roots
The McCarthey siblings trace their Kearns legacy to Helen Marie Kearns, the youngest of four children born to Jennie and Thomas Kearns, a U.S. senator and mining magnate who first purchased a 50 percent stake in the Tribune in 1901.
Shortly after the death of her father in 1918 following an automobile accident, 19-year-old Helen married Glen Elroy McCarthey, a sales manager with Crown Zellerbach paper company whom she had met while McCarthey was stationed at Fort Douglas. They were married in a lavish ceremony at Salt Lake City's Cathedral of the Madeleine, and then made their home in California.
Then, in January 1926, with the oldest child 5 years old and the youngest barely a year, the family stopped off in Salt Lake City to visit while traveling to the East to purchase furniture for a new dream home. Glen began feeling ill, and within a short time the pneumonia proved fatal. He died in the Kearns Mansion on South Temple — now the Utah Governor's Mansion — where Helen's mother, Jennie Judge Kearns, lived with her nephew Jack Gallivan, whom she had taken under her wing after her sister's death.
A widow at 27, Helen was emotionally devastated. "I don't think she ever got over it," says Phil, a student of the family's history. "She was always a very lonely woman."
Helen returned to California, but soon traveled with her mother and children to Europe on a trip "to forget all her sorrows." It was there she was swept off her feet by Mario Gabellini. "He was an Italian gigolo," said Tom. "In every sense."
She married Gabellini in Paris and they had a son. The marriage, however, was annulled and Helen returned to the United States, where she married again, this time to New York attorney Harold Brophy. Helen's youngest son, christened Gian Carlo Gabellini, took the name John Paul Brophy, but went by the nickname "Gabby."
"Harry" Brophy had little time for Helen's children, who were at times raised in Salt Lake City under the influence of their grandmother and at other times were sent to private schools and military academies. Helen split her time between a family ranch in Reno, a home in California and her mother's home, the Kearns Mansion. She traveled prolifically, exposing her children to all the sparkle and glitter of an affluent lifestyle.
At the time, Helen had about 40 percent of the Salt Lake Tribune company stock, but she had no direct involvement with the Salt Lake Tribune.
A world upside down
1943 was a portentous year for the McCartheys.
In July, Helen died at the family ranch in Reno just before her 44th birthday
Then the family matriarch, Jennie Kearns, died in September. The two deaths left hefty estate taxes to be paid.
The estate was further complicated when Helen's son Philip Glen was killed in an airplane crash in late 1943.
In theory, Helen's stock in the family corporations was to be divided among the three surviving children, Thomas Kearns McCarthey, Sheila McCarthey and John Paul Brophy. According to Phil, Helen's attorney-husband skirted the intent of the will in such a way as to guarantee that he was entitled to income from Helen's trust until his own death — an event that would not happen for 23 years.
Within a matter of months, the three surviving children went from a life of international travel and lavish parties to having little at all. They were rich, yes, but their stepfather controlled their mother's trust.
Kearns McCarthey's future was uncertain. He had attended college for a year, but never exhibited much aptitude for books. All of the strong family figures in his life were gone.
When World War II broke out, he tried to enlist in the military, but a hand injury kept him out of uniform. Instead, he worked as a laborer in the San Francisco shipyards.
After the war, Kearns McCarthey went to see his uncle, Thomas F. Kearns, in Salt Lake City. The young Kearns McCarthey was drinking heavily — a curse of Kearns descendants, says Phil — and he hoped his uncle, who had founded Alcoholics Anonymous in Utah, could help.
He found work for the Salt Lake Tribune selling classified advertising. "He was content doing that and he was very good at it," said Gallivan.
In his role as a salesman he came to know and respect John F. Fitzpatrick, the stern publisher who had guided the paper since the death of Sen. Kearns, for whom he had served as an executive secretary. Kearns McCarthey came to look on Fitzpatrick as his uncle, while Fitzpatrick's heir apparent, Jack Gallivan, was seen as his older brother.
"Dad thought the world of Jack," Phil said. "Jack always did what Jack thought was best, and Dad trusted him."
Kearns McCarthey lived an unremarkable suburban life. A devout Catholic, he married and raised five children in a simple home near the Salt Lake Country Club.
As Tom recalls, no one would ever have guessed that he was heir to a fortune. He saved enough to send his children to private Catholic schools and to preparatory schools in the East.
It was "probably an upper-middle-class" life, says Tom. "But we lived pretty simple."
Harry Brophy's death in 1966 released Helen's trust, but it did not change the McCarthey family's way of life. At least not to casual observers.
The money allowed Kearns McCarthey to send his children to expensive private colleges. They managed to take trips to the Kentucky Derby almost every year, and there were other sporting events, too. Only in the last few years of his life did Kearns begin to splurge a little with his inheritance, and even then it was tame, Tom said.
When the stock passed to Kearns, Sheila and John Paul Brophy in 1966, each had about 13 percent ownership in the Kearns-Tribune Corp., the company that owned the Tribune. But by 1970, John Paul Brophy and Sheila McCarthey, who was known among family members as "Champagne Sheila" because she never went anywhere without a bottle of bubbly tucked into a custom-made violin case, had both decided they wanted out of Kearns-Tribune.
The corporation bought them out by giving them the Kearns Building, across Main Street from the Tribune Building, and the Tribune's interest in television station KUTV Channel 2. By the end of 1970, Kearns McCarthey had become the paper's single largest stockholder with 40 percent.
Kearns and Jack
Kearns McCarthey was the only member of the McCarthey family to that time to take any interest in the Salt Lake Tribune, and for 40 years he was content to sell classified advertising.
"Dad's mom always told him to stay with the Tribune," said Tom. "She told him 'This is where your livelihood comes from. The senator bought the paper, and I want to make sure it stays in the family.' "
Kearns McCarthey never moved up in the management ranks, something that could be laid at the feet of then-publisher John F. Fitzpatrick, who was never one to play favorites no matter who owned the company stock.
Tom said his dad never wanted anything more. "He drove a beat-up car and went to work every morning at his crappy desk with the rest" of the salesmen, he said. "Those were his buddies."
Those who remember Kearns McCarthey describe him as a Regular Joe who blended nondescriptly into the bureaucratic machinery of the Newspaper Agency Corp., which prints, sells ads for and distributes the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News.
During the 1960s, Kearns McCarthey befriended another young employee, an accountant named Dominic Welch.
"Kearns and I had a great relationship," said Welch, now the publisher of the Salt Lake Tribune.
Family members describe Welch as "dad's little brother."
"We had some great trips," Welch grinned in recollection of Kearns' passion for gambling. On occasion, Welch would arrive at his office to find Kearns waiting, wearing a mischievous smile. He'd tell Welch, "I've got a plane waiting. Let's fly to El Paso and play the horses. We'll be back by 5 o'clock."
Welch would protest about being too busy, but he'd go anyway. "We'd get home and he'd call his wife and say what a tough day he'd had. Kearns was one of my favorite people in life."
Only a handful of people knew that Kearns McCarthey was the largest shareholder of the paper. And Kearns was content to sit back and let the publishers take the limelight, first John Fitzpatrick, later Jack Gallivan and then Gallivan's hand-picked successor in the organization, Jerry O'Brien.
"In those days, Fitzpatrick was the only juice at the paper," said one former Tribune executive of the Fitzpatrick years. "He had the respect of (LDS Church President) David O. McKay, and he had forged the peace with the Deseret News. It didn't matter who owned the company stock, his power was absolute" in directing the paper's fortunes and future.
It also reflected a decades-old policy, started by Fitzpatrick in the 1920s, where Tribune owners were kept at arms length from the day-to-day operations of the paper and its editorial decisions.
Later on, Kearns McCarthey was on the board of directors, but he was content to leave most decisions to Gallivan, whom he trusted implicitly.
"Let's say the Gallivans have always had a larger profile in the community," says Sarah McCarthey Dressman, a professor of education at the University of Illinois, who along with brothers Tom and Phil is leading the fight to purchase the Tribune. "To some extent we were satisfied, or at least my father was satisfied, to have a role that wasn't quite as high profile."
Yet there were times the relationship was frayed. Tom remembers his father relating the account of when Lord Thompson, a Canadian media mogul, came through town and offered to buy the Salt Lake Tribune. Gallivan flatly rejected the offer.
Kearns McCarthey took Gallivan to the woodshed. "Dad got real mad," Tom said. "He told Jack, 'Don't you ever, ever speak for me.' Dad would never have sold, but he did want to be consulted."
While squabbles are a part of any family, Gallivan said his relationship with Kearns McCarthey was always warm. "He was a very lovable person, very loyal to all the causes he believed in," he said. "And the Tribune was his principal love."
The McCarthey siblings say their father loved Gallivan, but that Gallivan sometimes did not afford him the kind of respect deserving of the largest shareholder. There were other rifts with Gallivan over the years, but these were always kept out of the public eye, and there was never a whisper of newsroom gossip about it.
As the McCartheys remember it, most people in the 1960s and 1970s thought Jack Gallivan owned the paper. Gallivan, they said, did nothing to dissuade this perception. And as Gallivan basked in the glory of being one of the most powerful people in the state, Kearns McCarthey labored in obscurity.
Heirs apparent
In fact, no one really paid much attention to the unassuming Kearns McCarthey, nor did they when his son Tom was hired in the Tribune newsroom in 1973. Kearns' other children worked at the Tribune off and on over the years in the library or doing odd jobs, usually during the summer while on break from school.
Phil graduated from Gonzaga and stayed in Spokane the next five years to sell insurance, perpetuating the McCarthey sales legacy started by his grandfather. In 1979, he returned to Salt Lake City, bought and operated a bar for a year, and then returned to selling insurance.
He has been active in various civic causes, including the fight against multiple sclerosis, and in his local Catholic parish. He sat on the board of directors for the Salt Lake Tribune but remained largely unknown inside and out of the Tribune newsroom.
Tom, also a Gonzaga graduate who now sits on the school's board of regents, was the only one of the McCarthey children who ever made a career out of journalism, and one of only a few descendants of Sen. Kearns to work for the newspaper. "I always knew I was going to work for the newspaper, and I always knew I wanted to be a writer," he said.
He worked at a number of different assignments, ranging from the police beat to rock music reviews. He was eventually handed a coveted plum, that of travel writer.
"Everybody liked Tom," said one co-worker. "He never acted like an overlord, and he had no real agenda other than traveling the world on the Tribune's dime. We were all jealous of him."
Most believed Tom was hired because of his family ties to the business, and they anticipated arrogance indicative of his privileged education and status as a Tribune owner. But they soon found young Tom genuinely affable and unpretentious.
"He would drink beers with us regular stiffs," remembers one co-worker, "but you always knew there was a line there. He was never really one of us."
Tom was seen by his colleagues as a competent journalist and writer, but maybe he was not as aggressive as some of his hard-news colleagues would have liked.
Single and handsome, one family insider recalled, "His family breathed a sigh of relief" when he finally settled down and married Mary Schubach, the daughter of Richard Schubach of Standard Optical.
Those inside the Tribune and McCarthey family believed Tom would one day become the publisher of the Salt Lake Tribune, that Jack Gallivan would take him under his wing and train him as a successor. But it never happened, something perceived by Tom's siblings as a snub to the McCarthey family.
But a series of events occurred in the mid-1990s that would propel the McCartheys into the limelight, change the direction of the Salt Lake Tribune and awaken old rivalries with the Deseret News.
A family coup
After Fitzpatrick's death in 1960, Jack Gallivan was the undisputed power at the Salt Lake Tribune. He dabbled in myriad business deals, from a newfangled bicycle with an automatic transmission to a magnesium extraction process (now MagCorp.) and — significantly — in early cable TV ventures.
Those who worked with him at the time say he was not much interested in news, but he was not shy about using news pages to champion a number of Chamber of Commerce interests, in particular the expansion of the Salt Palace and in a failed, Tribune-trumpeted campaign in support of "liquor by the drink."
In fact, there were so many "holy cows" at the Tribune that editors had a rubber stamp made with a cow and a halo, and stories of personal interest to Gallivan were stamped to let editors know not to change them in any way.
Reporters at the time say Gallivan's business interests were a distraction in the newsroom, as well as the butt of many, many jokes. But Welch, the current publisher, insists that Gallivan was never involved in any business deals.
In 1983, Gallivan decided to "retire," hand-picking Jerry O'Brien as his successor while assuming the title of publisher emeritus. Gallivan decided the company needed a "money man" and named Dominic Welch president, splitting his former duties among two trusted proteges.
When publisher Jerry O'Brien died of cancer in 1994, Gallivan and the major stockholders of the Tribune met to determine his successor.
Gallivan, who was still viewed as the real power at the Tribune even though he held the "emeritus" title, advanced his son, Mickey, a former news reporter and current advertising executive, as the prospective publisher. The McCarthey family, with about 40 percent of the Kearns-Tribune stock, said absolutely not.
"Jack had this thing that . . . Mickey was going to be publisher," Tom said. "We said no way, never. So we looked around, and Welch was the compromise candidate. He was just there."
Mickey Gallivan said no such meeting ever occurred. "I don't think that is true at all," he said of the account related by the McCartheys and others. Welch also denied knowledge of the incident.
Those familiar with the turn of events say Jack Gallivan was devastated by the family's rejection of his son, as well as the fact the McCartheys had openly challenged him for control of the Tribune. "I think he recognized that times were changing . . . that owners were not going to sit back and let him make decisions for them any longer," Phil said.
Welch was also smart enough to know that the elderly Gallivan's influence was waning, and with the Gallivan family out of the picture, a new power structure was inevitable. Sources say Welch cast his support with the McCartheys.
"There is no question that Jack kept the McCartheys on the outside looking in," Tom said. "Jack had kept Dad under wraps, and no one had ever challenged him until we did."
Family members insist Gallivan has over the years resisted efforts by the McCarthey siblings to assume a greater role in the family business. Tom and Phil both agree that Gallivan felt the Tribune was his own legacy and that stockholders like the McCartheys were to be kept at arm's length. If Tribune owners were to ever exert control, "We told ourselves we had to bring him (Gallivan) down," said Tom.
"He hates us and I don't know why," he added.
The cost of cable
The McCarthey power play was a long time coming, family members say. The family was increasingly unhappy with Gallivan, believing he had neglected the Tribune at the expense of other business pursuits, notably ventures in cable television that eventually produced fabulous wealth, at least on paper, for the the Kearns-Tribune Corp.
On two different occasions in the 1970s, Gallivan had been willing to let the newspaper be sold, but in each instance Kearns McCarthey had blocked the sale, Phil said.
By the 1990s, the Kearns-Tribune Corp. owned a portion of Tele-Communications Inc. — better known as TCI Cablevision — a rapidly growing company being eyed by hostile suitors. TCI chairman John Malone, a close friend of fellow TCI board member Jack Gallivan, wanted to buy the Tribune's TCI's Class B stock — stock worth 10 votes per share compared to a standard one vote per share.
Without it, Malone was likely to lose control of TCI in a hostile takeover. So he went to Gallivan with an offer of a tax-free merger whereby TCI would absorb the Kearns-Tribune Corp. in exchange for standard TCI stock, and a lot of it.
Gallivan saw the offer as an unprecedented opportunity to make small fortunes for himself and Kearns-Tribune stockholders, as well as Salt Lake Tribune employees whose pension plans were tied up in a stock-option program.
In 1995, stockholders began getting calls and letters from Gallivan urging them to take the deal. Most Tribune stockholders held only small amounts of stock, were earning little and welcomed the opportunity to cash out. Tribune stockholders would end up getting more than $3,000 in TCI stock for every share of their Kearns-Tribune stock.
During the frenzied negotiations that followed, the McCartheys say they were alone in opposition to selling the Tribune, and they described the pressure to sell as intense.
Gallivan said he personally negotiated an option with TCI that would allow the Kearns family to buy the paper after five years (a condition to avoid tax liabilities) and a second deal that would allow a team including Kearns family descendants — led by the McCartheys — to manage the Tribune until the purchase happened.
"I would never have sold without those agreements," Gallivan said. "They (TCI) knew about my commitment to Jenny Judge Kearns and the Kearns family, and I told them (TCI) they had to comply or there was no deal."
Phil remembers the turn of events differently, saying Gallivan was pressuring all stockholders to sell and that only the McCarthey family was opposed to the Tribune sale to TCI. While TCI had agreed to the Gallivan management plan for the Tribune, it was the McCartheys, not Gallivan, who insisted on the option to purchase the paper in 2002.
Phil likened the deal to having a one-of-a-kind 1966 Mustang. "I agree to sell it to you, but you have to keep it under lock and key; you can't drive it, and I have my guy guarding it. After five years, I get to buy it back from you."
Under that agreement, the McCartheys agreed to sell the Tribune to TCI, a deal worth a reported $731 million.
They are adamant they would never have sold the Tribune if not for Gallivan's financial maneuvering, which left them no other options. And some harbor ill feelings that they were ever put in that situation.
"It wasn't just Jack Gallivan, and I don't think it should all be blamed on Jack Gallivan," said Maureen McCarthey. "Yeah, he spearheaded it, but there are other people that could have said it was important (to keep the Tribune), and they didn't. They wanted the money."
The 'McCarthey legacy'?
The McCartheys recently bolstered their portion of the management group, Salt Lake Tribune Publishing Co., and thus participation in the 2002 purchase option, by doubling their 40 percent share. They did so earlier this year by acquiring an additional 40 percent from Kevin K. Steiner and Robert C. Steiner, also Kearns descendants, who owned large blocks of Tribune stock before the TCI purchase.
Subsequently they dissolved the management company board and plan to remove cousins who are no longer involved in the potential Tribune purchase, as well as Mickey Gallivan, who was put on the board as a peace gesture to his father.
The makeup of the new board has not yet been decided, but Phil says there will be no mistaking who runs the Tribune.
It will be the McCartheys. The fly in the ointment is not the family's financial capacity to buy back the Tribune. Based on 1997 values of the stock exchanged in the merger with TCI, matriarch Jane McCarthey, 74, had almost $190 million. Tom had another $6 million, Phil $7.9 million and Sarah $5.7 million.
Their sister Maureen, although not part of the company seeking to buy back the Tribune, has pledged to use her share to help her siblings. That would leave the McCartheys with roughly $215 million, based on 1997 stock values.
Although some of the profits have been spent, and the value of the TCI stock, since acquired by AT&T, has fallen, the McCartheys say they will have no problem raising the funds from within the family.
If and when that happens, the McCartheys are united on one point: Owning the Tribune is no longer about the Kearns family legacy. It is about the McCarthey family legacy.
"Absolutely," Maureen says. "It's obvious that everybody (else) sold out, that it wasn't important to them. The money was more important to them, and here we are fighting to get it back."
Welch, who agreed he would probably take a different role with the Tribune after an August 2002 buyback, believes the McCartheys alone can be credited with keeping the Tribune in family ownership. In 1970, with Kearns' brother and sister having lined up a buyer for the Tribune, Kearns McCarthey killed the deal.
"That was the beginning of the McCarthey era," Welch said.
As Tom and Phil see it, the Salt Lake Tribune has a century-old legacy with the Kearns family. But the other family members have over the years sold off their shares, leaving just the McCartheys to carry the torch.
Said Phil, "Some chose not to carry the torch, and we decided the McCartheys would have to carry the torch ourselves to ensure the legacy went on."
Added Tom, "We are the McCartheys, and we'd rather make the Tribune the independent voice of the McCartheys. But without forgetting our roots, obviously. We realize this was part of our heritage, but after three generations it is time for a new legacy."
That McCarthey legacy is certain to be different than the Gallivan legacy or the Fitzpatrick legacy or the Kearns legacy, Sarah said. In the past, ownership was kept separate from management of the Salt Lake Tribune.
"With our generation, that separation is less defined and there's more overlap," she said. "I think we do want to have more of a voice overall in the community through the newspaper."
Gallivan no longer participates in the newspaper's day-to-day operations, though he retains an office on the 10th floor of the Tribune Building. Still active in charity work, the publisher emeritus said he is "perfectly happy" that the McCarthey siblings have taken the reins of the Salt Lake Tribune.
"My charge from Jennie Judge Kearns was to keep it in the family, and the McCartheys have made that possible," he said.
"I feel confident they are going to get it back."
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