The board of directors of the Boston Herald-Traveler Corporation voted yesterday morning to sell "the name and good will of our newspapers, together with our publishing plant and all equipment therein" to the Heard Corporation for 58.5 million.

The Hearst Corporation publishes the Record-American and the Sunday Advertiser.

The move will require approval of the Herald-Traveler's stockholders. That approval will be requested at a meeting scheduled for early June.

Funds Cut-Off

In announcing the decision. Harold Clancy, president of the Herald-Traveler, said that the loss of Channel 5 in Boston to Boston Broadcasters Inc. (BBI) had cut off "the source of funds essential to continue newspaper operation." BBI took over Channel 5 in March after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to reverse a lower court's ruling granting it license to the station.

Clancy said that "efforts to find a buyer for our newspapers willing to undertake the burden of three-newspaper competition in the Boston market have been unsuccessful."

He added, however, that the Herald-Traveler Corporation would continue to operate radio station WHDH and would change its name to WHDH Corporation.

Clancy did not indicate an exact date for the last edition of the Herald-Traveler. However, other sources have said that the paper will cease publication on June 4. The Herald-Traveler is in its 125th year of publication.