Bulletin publisher William McLean III, 85

IT WAS no longer true that nearly everyone read the

Bulletin.

The famous slogan - for many years displayed in New Yorker cartoons and elsewhere - gave way to two major forces: the ascendancy of the competition and the arrival of TV news.

"To this day, I feel we really did a fine job, and gave the public a straight story," former publisher and editor William L. McLean III said in an interview when the Bulletin closed in January 1982. "That's the greatest source of satisfaction I have."

William L. McLean III, whose grandfather, William L. McLean, bought the Evening Bulletin in 1895 and built it into one of the nation's largest and most respected newspapers, died Aug. 27 of kidney failure. He was 83 and lived in Wynnewood.

Bill McLean inherited a newspaper that had the reputation of solid respectability, accuracy and dullness, with a booming circulation at its peak of more than 700,000 daily and nearly a million on Sunday.

His grandfather, who died in 1931, bought a paper that ranked last in a field of 13 dailies in the city and took it to the top.

The old man's maxim was that the paper should deliver the news politely, always reserved and never shouting. Subsequent family members continued this tradition, including the late Robert McLean, William's son and Bill's father.

The paper began its decline in the '70s, caused by a number of factors, including the ascendancy of the Inquirer, with the dynamic Eugene L. Roberts Jr. as executive editor. Under his leadership, the Inquirer began scooping up Pulitzer Prizes and surged ahead in circulation and advertising.

Bill McLean sold the paper, then called simply The Bulletin, to the Charter Media Co. in the late '70s, and after Charter tried unsuccessfully to find a buyer for it, it died.

McLean, a graduate of Princeton University, started at the Bulletin in 1950, worked through nearly every department, then moved into senior management in the '60s.

He was also head of Independent Publications Inc., in Bryn Mawr, which operates a number of small newspapers. He was chairman of the board until last year.

Bill was president in 1964 of what is now the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, and served several years as a trustee of its foundation.

He was a member of the Merion Cricket Club; the vestry of the Church of the Redeemer, in Bryn Mawr; and the Blooming Grove Hunting and Fishing Club, in Pike County.

He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth; two sons, William L. IV and Warden; three daughters, Lisa and Sandra McLean and H. Brooke Katzenbach; and five grandchildren. Another daughter, Laura, died in 1965.

Services: Memorial service 11 a.m. Oct. 1 at the Church of the Redeemer, 230 Pennswood Road, Bryn Mawr.