Daughter

Alicia Patterson, 20-year-old daughter of Publisher-Editor Joseph Medill Patterson of the loud Chicago Tribune, louder New York Daily News and vulgar Liberty (weekly)*, is thought to favor her father. Her older sister, Elinor, took to the high art of drama when Producer Morris Gest found that she was ideal for the nun in his U. S. Miracle (TIME, Feb. 15, 1925). But journalism is good enough for Alicia Patterson. Some three months ago she undertook to gather pearls for the Daily News to cast before its million-odd readers.

But not until last fortnight did Editor & Publisher (journalistic trade weekly) publish an interview telling how the daughter of a press potentate enjoys and conducts herself as a member of her father's staff. Then it became apparent that assembling tabloid news is as much fun for the daughter as furnishing it to the masses is for the parent. Miss Patterson said: ". . . the most fun in the world. Far better than going to school, and you learn so much more, too."

She told about being sent to see if Colonel Lindbergh had any "airdrome sweethearts" out on Long Island. She spoke with eagerness of visiting a jail which lodged a Brooklyn murderess "who killed her husband and now is sorry." One of her experiences, as she told it at length, was patly typical of the kind of education the Daily News gives its reporters and readers.

A woman in Hoboken was in court accused of henpecking her husband, allowing him only 50-c- per day to spend. Miss Patterson was sent to interview this unusual woman. Climbing to the top of a Hoboken tenement, Miss Patterson tapped on a door and at once confronted a beldame "about ten feet wide." Miss Patterson started to explain that she was from the Daily News. No sooner had she named that name than the "wide" woman approached, menacingly. "Downstairs I went," Miss Patterson told Editor & Publisher, "and not exactly right side up either!"

*The cover of Liberty for July 16 spoiled many an appetite. It showed a man on the verge of vomiting over the rail of a ship named Put-ln-Bay.