At the Waldorf

(See front cover.)

It was Convention Week for the gazette & clarion men. Unlike other convention groups, they did not backslap. That was their distinguishing sign as they swarmed through the lobbies and corridors of the Waldorf-Astoria, Manhattan hotel, during the annual sessions of the American Newspaper Publishers' Association and the Associated Press.

Among those present were:

McCormick & Patterson. The two newspapers with the largest circulations in the U. S. are the New York Daily News (daily 1,226,000, Sunday 1,416,000) and the Chicago Tribune (daily 811,000, Sunday 1,167,000). The first, a tabloid, is the offspring of the second. Both are published by Col. Robert Rutherford McCormick, 47, and Capt. Joseph Medill Patterson, 49. Col. McCormick devotes most of his time to the Tribune, while Capt. Patterson's chief interest is the Daily News.

They are cousins, grandchildren of famed Joseph Medill who put the Tribune on the path to lustiness. They made sandpies together as children. They went to Yale. But before young Patterson was graduated, he rushed off to China in 1900 as war correspondent. Two years later, he was married and became a reporter on the Tribune. As he rose from one desk to another, he wrote four trivial novels, the most successful of which was A Little Brother of the Rich, and one good play, The Fourth Estate. He said he was writing to please himself. When the War started, he went to Germany, Belgium, France for the Tribune. On the entrance of the U. S., he enlisted in the artillery as a private, emerged a captain.

Meanwhile, young McCormick was studying law, dabbling in politics, getting married, emerging from the War a colonel.

From the time that they first began to wiggle pencils, Cousins McCormick & Patterson knew that the Tribune was waiting for them. They took over the reins of editorship in 1914, and after the War their whip cracked loudly, domineeringly. The morning field in Chicago had been cut down to two newspapers: the Tribune and the Hearst-owned Herald and Examiner.* In a circulation war which culminated in the distribution of nearly $1,000,000 worth of "lucky number" coupons, both newspapers distinguished themselves in bad taste and the Tribune achieved a domination which has never since been threatened. Andy & Min Gump became world figures and the Tribune Tower was built (Col. McCormick chose the site and Capt. Patterson suggested the $100,000 contest for an architectural design). This April, the Tribune won another great victory when it led the attack that smashed the Thompson-Small-Crowe-Smith machine in the Republican primaries (TIME, April 23). To the victor belong the boasts; and boast the Tribune did.

The smaller fry of editors and publishers at the A. N. P. A. convention saw a small electric sign on the ground floor of the Waldorf-Astoria. It read:

CHICAGO TRIBUNE >>-> EXHIBIT

It led into the largest and perhaps the most blatant exhibit at the convention. Huge electric signs gleamed: "CHAMPION OF THE WORLD," "WORLD'S GREATEST NEWSPAPER." Printed matter told how the Tribune had licked Mayor Thompson & friends; how, because of the Tribune, "Chicago can again walk proudly among the cities!--and the class in advertising may now step up and learn a lesson from the politicians!"

The smaller fry saw another sign forming in their minds: Blatancy pays if used at the right moment. Well does the Tribune know this. When it sets out to fight a roughneck, its editorial writers use the language of the street. When it built a tabloid in New York City for more than a million readers, it gave the subway eyes what they wanted but did not overstep the bounds of decency as did Bernarr Macfadden's pornoGraphic. When it founded the weekly, Liberty, it knew that it would have to be louder than the Saturday Evening Post.*

Few men know their public better than Col. McCormick & Capt. Patterson. Of the two, Capt. Patterson is the better newshawk, the more imaginative. He is credited with suggesting the characters of Andy & Min Gump to Cartoonist Sidney Smith. Capt. Patterson has hatched many of his startling schemes while contemplating the fine cattle and hogs which he breeds on his farm at Libertyville, Ill. Col. McCormick does much of his thinking while taking long walks.

Edward Hubert Butler, 44, who went to Yale a few years after McCormick & Patterson, was elected president of the American Newspaper Publishers' Association. His paper is the Buffalo News, biggest in a city where the competition is so great that the highways for 200 miles around are punctuated every mile with newspaper signboards. He has a big, handsome jaw, banking interests, and is a director of the Associated Press.

Frank Brett Noyes, 64, who knows politicians, likes the sun, travels widely, was re-elected president of the Associated Press. His paper is the Washington Star.

Maj. Edward Bushrod Stahlman, 84^, was the oldest active newspaper publisher at the convention. Born in Mecklenburg, Germany, he came to the U. S. to build railroads before purchasing the Nashville Banner. His never lukewarm rival, Luke Lea of the Nashville Tenneseean, was also present.

Adolph S. Ochs, 70, publisher of the New York Times, was honored by the Associated Press at a dinner at Sherry's to commemorate his 50th anniversary as a newspaper publisher.

Walter Ansel Strong, 44, tall, hefty, was congratulated on the new plant his Chicago Daily News, famed home paper, is building on the Chicago River. This plant will have a public piazza and fountains in its front yard.

Samuel P. Weston, newspaper doctor, had a busy time being consulted by publishers yearning to know what was wrong with their papers. Canny, he refused to divulge the names of any of his clients. However, it is known that, as an engineer, he helped design the plants of the New York Herald Tribune and the Akron, Ohio, Beacon-Journal.

Col. S. L. Slover, publisher of the Norfolk, Va., Ledger-Dispatch, packed up his new kit bag with zipper fastening; it was his prize for winning the annual golf tournament of the A. N. P. A. at the Westchester-Biltmore Country Club.

John C. Martin, suave vice president of the Philadelphia Public Ledger and the New York Evening Post, was pointed out as the most heavily insured man in the U. S. He carries $6,500,000 worth of life insurance in 23 companies.

James Wright Brown, publisher of Editor & Publisher, famed for his greeting of "How," distributed to friends many a package of Lucky Strike cigarets with his name on them.

David Lawrence was lauded for the steady growth of his complete, factual United States Daily of Washington, D. C.

Albert M. ("Lucky") Snook, Vandyke-bearded publisher of the Aurora, Ill., Beacon-Journal, smiled when stupid photographers asked him to spell his name over again. He had distinguished himself at the Associated Press convention in 1924 by emitting a strange & enthusiastic cry on the appearance of President Calvin Coolidge. His wife, at home in Aurora, heard the cry over the radio, said: "When I recognized Mr. Snook's holler, I knew he was all right." Mr. Snook achieved the epithet of "Lucky" when he won The Chess Game, a painting by John Singer

Sargent, at a lottery in 1924 for the benefit of lay patrons of the Painters' and Sculptors' Gallery Association in Manhattan.*

Zell Hart Deming of the Warren, Ohio, Tribune-Chronicle was the only publisher present who does her own fruit canning.

Laymen. Publishers also heard fine words from the mouths of Rev. Samuel Parkes Cadman, president of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America; Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., president of General Motors Corp.; Count Hermann Keyserling, philosopher; Mayor James J. Walker of New York City; M. H. Aylesworth, president of the National Broadcasting Corp. The only backslapper at the convention was a onetime blackface comedian named Frank Colton who was hired to parade through corridors of the Waldorf-Astoria as Maj. Amos Hoople, comic strip character syndicated by N. E. A.

Associated Press. Two resolutions were adopted: 1) to extend special voting rights and protest rights to the entire A. P. membership of 1,200 newspapers; 2) to float a new bond issue of $500,000, of which no member can buy more than $1,000 worth.

A. N. P. A. The American Newspaper Publishers' Association adopted a resolution urging Congress to lower postal rates for newspapers (these rates now range from 50% to 900% higher than before the War). A committee on Freedom of the Press was appointed to investigate the doings of outside censors.

In Washington, D. C., a fortnight ago, two of the 217 members of the American Society of Newspaper Editors debated what a reputable newspaper should do with the following hypothetical story: A prominent businessman, large advertiser, social leader, philanthropist, is in an automobile accident with a woman who is not his wife; a reporter finds out that the two had been in a roadhouse together and had been drinking before the accident; but the police are willing to hush up the whole affair.

The assembled editors unanimously decided it was a newspaper's duty to its public to publish the story, straight-f orwardly, without bias, without playing up its sensational angle.

Satisfied with their doings, the editors adjourned after electing Walter M. Harrison, managing editor of the Daily Oklahoman of Oklahoma City, to the presidency of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

* There is also the carefully edited Chicago Journal of Commerce, of which 33-year-old Knowlton L. ("Snake") Ames Jr., onetime Princeton footballer, is general manager.

* Last week Sheppard made, executive editor of Liberty made a two-page confession to his readers. He said in part: "It doesn't make any particular hit with us when people try to make themselves friendly by telling how terrible the old Post is getting to be. The Post is a pretty successful publishing enterprise. It makes a few pennies and has a few readers. . . . We are not addressing ourselves to thoughtful gentlemen who sit in club windows on Fifth Avenue and read editorials in the [New York] Times. We are not appealing to the smart, fashionable rich or to the intellectuals and intelligentsia."

* Other able Snooks are John Wilson Snook, warden of the U. S. penitentiary at Atlanta, Ga.; Homer Clyde Snook, electrophysicist, of South Orange, N. J.; John S. Snook, onetime Congressman, of Paulding, Ohio; Frank S. Snook, chief of the State Department of Motor Vehicles, of Sacramento, Calif.