Periodicals

Roy W. Howard, head of the E. W. Scripps Co. and its 26 Scripps-Howard newspapers, met some gentlemen from the Guaranty Co., the Chemical National Bank of Manhattan and of Sidlo, Simons, Day & Co. of Denver. The men, like most men in finance, depend for livelihood upon creating new security issues for sale to investors. Mr. Howard's company, they knew, could carry new financing. It had never gone to the general public for funds and it was a great profit-earner. On his part, he could use some millions to pay for papers which he had recently acquired and for others which he proposes to buy. The group called their parleys a deal, and last weeK the E. W. Scripps Co. issued $8,500,-ooo gold debenture bonds through the three banking houses.

Everyone reads periodicals and everyone reflects that income from subscriptions and advertisements must be profitable. The nickel paid for a copy of the Saturday Evening Post does not pay for the cost of paper alone. But the $8,000 that the magazine charges for a full-page advertisement in black and the $11,500 for four-color pages yield profits which financiers are beginning to exploit. Each reader may be a prospect for the sale of such securities, just as almost every user of electricity in the U. S. has been offered investments in his "home" public utility.

But little more than a dozen publishers of the several thousand in the U. S. yet have offered their securities to the general investment public. Among the few which have done so are:

Curtis Publications (Saturday Evening Post, Country Gentleman, Ladies' Home Journal, New York Evening Post, Philadelphia Public Ledger).

Hearst group (25 newspapers, Cosmopolitan).

Paul Block (5 papers).

Booth Brothers (8 papers in Michigan).

Frank Ernest Gannett (11 papers chiefly in New York State, but including the recently bought Hartford, Conn., Times).

Conde Nast (Vanity Fair, Vogue. Last week, as he sailed on the S. S. Munargo for Havana, he said that from April on he would edit and print an edition of Vogue in Germany. French and British editions already exist).

Luke Lea of Tennessee (4 Southern papers, including the Atlanta Constitution).

Colonel Ira Clifton Copley of Aurora, Ill. (papers in Illinois and California; see p. 23).

United Publishers (trade papers).

National Trade Journals (10 business papers being merged last week).

Butterick Publishing Co. (Delineator).