NEWS
Finding his niche
Posted: Saturday, May 12, 2001
Jim Squires makes his mark in Central Kentucky and the Thoroughbred business
I first met Jim Squires ten years ago. He had recently moved into the Central Kentucky area and we went to lunch at a bar and grill called Shooters, a now-defunct establishment that eventually went down with Calumet Farm, which owned it back then.
The meeting was ostensibly to talk about Thoroughbred Times. The publication was quietly being offered for sale to break up a bad partnership; Squires and several of his friends began to examine a possible purchase.
Squires said he was looking for some publications to occupy his time, but he was not interested in active management. A few years earlier, Squires had been pushed out as editor of the Chicago Tribune, though the golden parachute he had in his contract provided him a nice soft landing in the Bluegrass.
The sale never materialized for a variety of reasons. What eventually would have happened had he purchased the Times and become its publisher is hard to say. Knowing Squires, though, he most likely would have become actively involved in all facets of the publication, because that is what he knows and loves. He is a newsman at heart, and he lived and breathed news as the Washington, D.C., bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune, and as editor of the Tribune in the 1980s.
He is not the type of person who sits back and idly watches.
Not many details of the Times were really discussed at that lunch. Most of the time was spent talking about the publishing business and the media.
He recalled his years in Washington, the politics of government, and the politics of the newspaper business. Those are what got him excited. You can still see the glow on his face when he talks about news. His passion carried him to great successes. On his watch as editor of the Tribune, the paper won seven Pulitzer Prizes.
One may think that someone forced into early retirement at the pinnacle of his career would take a long, slow slide into anonymity, but you never got that impression about Jim Squires. Here was a man with boundless energy and enthusiasm, a quick wit, an inquisitive nature. At the time we had that lunch, he had bought a farm in the area and was breeding Paints, and he was a guest lecturer at Harvard University. He also was writing a book about the newspaper business that would be published the next year, and looking to buy some small newspapers in several towns in Kentucky, though nothing materialized.
It was not long after our meeting that he surfaced as the campaign spokesman for presidential candidate Ross Perot, whom he had met while at Harvard. Over dinner one night with Perot and lawyer Tom Luce, they talked about the need for a reform party. SquiresÕs passion about politics no doubt was infectious. Soon afterward Perot decided to finance the movement with $75-million out of his own pocket, and a third party was born. Perot received 19% of the popular vote in the 1992 election under the Reform Party banner.
While breeding Paints in the heart of the Bluegrass was not a conventional pursuit, in the end it helped him find his way. It led to some associations that gave him an opportunity to learn the Thoroughbred business from the ground up before getting involved financially. He sold a Paint to Airdrie Stud farm manager Tim Thornton, who gave the horse as a present to then Governor Brereton C. Jones, AirdrieÕs owner. That led to Jones asking Squires to become a member of the Kentucky Racing Commission.
From there, things evolved naturally. Squires became interested in Thoroughbreds and pursued that business with the same passion he does everything. He studied, he read, and he devoured as much information as he could lay his hands on. He also benefited from decades of experience breeding Paints, Quarter Horses, and Arabians.
His very first Thoroughbred stakes winner is making a lot of headlines these days. The horse goes by the name of Monarchos and he won the Kentucky Derby on May 5. This is good for newspaper people all over the country because the name lends itself to clever headlines, such as Monarchos rules, or Monarchos reigns, or Monarchos is king.
Squires, he once of the Paints, he once of the Reform Party, is now mainstream: He is the breeder of a Derby winner. In Kentucky, you can't get more traditional than that.
I think Jim Squires has found his niche.
Mark Simon is editor of Thoroughbred Times.
