After the death of publisher Ogden Mills Reid in 1947,the Herald Tribune, despite having leading writers and columnists, went into a decline under his widow Helen Rogers Reid, and sons Whitelaw Reid II and Ogden Rogers Reid (later a Congressman). In 1958-59 the Reids sold control to John Hay Whitney, under whom the morning paper expired August 15, 1966 (its legal successor was briefly the afternoon New York World Journal Tribune, a three-way merger between the Herald Tribune, the Hearst Corporation-owned New York Journal American, and the Scripps-Howard-owned New York World-Telegram and Sun).