True Greatness
True Greatness
Guess, and guess right if you can, what newspaper in the U. S. carries the most advertising. A paper without advertising may be an editorial success, but a paper with many pages, of advertising is a great financial success; for advertising is the golden reward of successful journalism.
And what U. S. paper has the most advertising? Is it any of the great or the near great?. The New York Times? The Boston Transcript? The Chicago Tribune? None of these. The proud publisher of the greatest amount of advertising since Jan. 1, 1925, could not keep it to himself. He began to advertise it. He is Frank B. Shutts, who publishes his Miami Herald in booming
Florida. These are the statistics he sets forth: SEVEN DAYS A WEEK LEADERS
Lines*
Miami Herald 18,024,587
Detroit News 16,414,678
Chicago Tribune 15,948,574
New York Times 13,587,936
Los Angeles Times 13,156,654
Washington Star 12,671,279
Pittsburgh Press 11,885,342
Los Angeles Examiner 10,862,405
St. Louis Post-Dispatch 10,556,160
Columbus Dispatch 10,478,036
SIX DAYS A WEEK LEADERS
Lines*
Miami Herald 13,419,560
Detroit News 11,998,266
Chicago Daily News 10,331,101
Washington Star 9,403,656
Pittsburgh Press 8,277,458
New York Times 8,157,150
Los Angeles Times 7,947,064
Columbus Dispatch 7,535,739
St. Louis Post-Dispatch 7,345,800
Chicago Tribune 6,269,943
Los Angeles Examiner 6 ,215,240
Not Small
The same boom which raised The Miami Herald to its finale, has also elevated The Miami Daily News. Last week the News opened a new $1,500,000 home overlooking Biscayne Bay, a building marked by a great tower--270 ft. high, patterned after the Giralda Tower at Seville. In celebration of the event it published a 504-page Sunday edition, including 15 color sections of 24 pages each. There were about 1,000 illustrations and enough "news" matter to fill 35 books of ordinary size. It also carried advertising of 1,500 business concerns for an aggregate of 813,036 agate lines.
Disturbing News
Death alters circumstances. Good humor before is not always good taste afterward. It was bad luck for a number of publishers that Mr. Bryan died shortly after he had once again focused the limelight upon himself and they were just about to caricature him.
Life had printed 20,000 copies of its weekly issue when news of Mr. Bryan's death was received last week. An editorial conference was called and the 20,000 copies were cast into the metaphorical wastebasket. All jokes and cartoons at Mr. Bryan's expense were removed from the press and replaced by other material. Then printing recommenced. It must have been costly.
The New Yorker (a magazine-about-town) was just ready to go to press, and found itself obliged to reset considerable type.
Similarly in the theatrical world the Garrick Gaieties, a review given by the younger players of the Theater Guild, deleted a skit in which one Philip Loel ably impersonated Mr. Bryan.
Lese-Majeste
Mistakes are costly, and the bigger the maker, the bigger the cost. Last May, The Saturday Evening Post published an article by one Meade Minnigerode, a young Manhattan litterateur. It was titled Rachel Jackson--An Informal Biography. In it the story of the wife of Andrew Jackson was told in a chatty manner, a manner similar to that in which Mr. Minnigerode had previously retailed in the Post the faults and foibles and personal characteristics of other characters in U. S. history-- Aaron Burr and others.
No one had taken serious offense at Mr. Minnigerode's chats about Burr and his friends, but when he came to delineating Rachel Jackson, the wife of a President of the U. S. and an idol of the state of Tennessee, he was guilty of lese-majeste.
And Tennessee took offense. It said the article was scandalous and untrue. It rose to the defense of Rachel and Andrew Jackson. Patriotic societies met and passed resolutions denouncing Minnigerode. Senator Kenneth D. McKellar of that state called the article "cruel, inhuman and untrue ... a carefully prepared political attack on the Democratic party ... an attack upon the good name of an innocent woman now dead 97 years."
Whether it was in a fit of repentance or not, the Saturday Evening Post last week published a wandering, anecdotal, sentimental eulogy of Jackson and His Beloved Rachel by one John Trotwood Moore. The eulogy was spread over five pages.
Mr. Moore pointed out one inaccuracy in Mr. Minnigerode's article by telling the true story. The original article said : "And sometimes the General went away and got into trouble. He was always quarreling and vituperating and fighting . . . with Mr. Dickinson, whom he pronounced to be a worthless, drunken blackguard scoundrel, and finally killed, quite deliberately, on a May morning when the other's pistol stopped at half-cock."
General Jackson challenged Dickinson, who was a crack shot, because he had insulted Mrs. Jackson. They fought with pistols at eight yards. Dickinson fired first and wounded Jackson near the heart. Jackson took deliberate aim and pulled the trigger. Then it was not Dickinson's, but Jackson's, pistol that stopped at , half cock. Jackson, sorely wounded, cocked it again and shot Dickinson, mortally wounding him.
The other items in the original article which Mr. Moore objected to included: 1) That Mrs. Jackson in her later years was a "stout little body ... a fat, coarse little brown-skinned woman in dowdy clothes." Mr. Moore contended that she was good looking, well mannered throughout her life.
2) That "after dinner she sat beside the General in front of the fireplace and smoked her long reed pipe, and sometimes she handed it to a guest with a cheery: 'Honey, won't you take a smoke ?' " Mr. Moore said she suffered from phthisis and smoked not for pleasure but for her health.
3) That it was "useless to pretend that she was not illiterate." To this Mr. Moore replied that spelling did not matter and that bad spelling was very common among prominent people in her day.
4) That Andrew Jackson was a young blade very fond of fighting and swearing. Mr. Moore answered that he did so only in youth, and very little by comparison with other men of his time, that he fought only three duels.
One other point the apologists of the Jacksons insisted upon: that the relations of the Jacksons were utterly free from moral blame. Jackson's political enemies stirred up a scandal many years ago about his marriage. Rachel Jackson had been first married to a man named Robards. He was cruel and they separated. Later, word came that he had secured a divorce through the legislature of Virginia. Thereupon Jackson married her. It developed a couple of years later that the divorce had never been granted. Robards had merely been granted the right to sue for divorce. He finally did sue, on grounds of adultery, and got his decree. Then the Jacksons were married again. This was the cause of many scandalous attacks on the Jacksons. It led him into the Dickinson duel and other troubles and quarrels.
Mr. Minnigerode, setting aside any question of moral blame, criticized Jackson for his "impetuosity" and "slender knowledge of the law" for not first making sure that a divorce had been granted.
*"Agate lines," in which advertisements are measured. Each "agate line" is a space a column wide and deep enough to accommodate a line of type very slightly smaller than the type in which this footnote is printed.