Sold: Pride & Liberty

In the city-rooms of the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News, editors gasped and whistled to themselves as they took a story. Their employers, Col. Robert Rutherford McCormick and Capt. Joseph Medill Patterson, suddenly, unexpectedly, had sold their nickel-weekly Liberty to Bernarr Macfadden!

Liberty had been Publisher Patterson's especial pride. When the money-making Daily News proved no outlet for the Tribune's profits, he deliberately set himself (in 1924) to challenge the Saturday Evening Post. He aimed at a slightly more jazz-loving level of the public than Satevepost's audience is supposed to be. Spending some $14,000,000 he got as high as 2,470,882 readers. (Satevepost has been more than 3,000,000.) In 1929 he prophesied: "We estimate that in 1935 Liberty will have the largest magazine circulation in the world." He even showed a graph of the future, in which Liberty topped Satevepost jauntily (TIME, July 1, 1929). Last week Liberty's circulation, always 99% newsstand, was claimed to have reached over 2,400,000.

The publishing world long had known that Liberty's advertising was being ridden to death by hard-boiled General Manager Max Annenberg, concerning whose acquaintance with Chicago's famed Scarface Al Capone an interesting testimonial was published last week in Big Bill Thompson's "The Tribune Shadow" (see p. 15). Annenberg once promised a 250,000 circulation growth at no increased page-rate and got thereby many an advertiser. Forthwith he cut Liberty's page-size, lost in goodwill what he had made in profit. James O'Shaughnessy, expert on advertising, was called in (TIME, July 29, 1929), but could not revive the invalid. Advertising makes a magazine pay; Liberty did not pay. It ailed, grew thinner, was printed on cheaper paper.

Still it remained Capt. Patterson's pride. He was satisfying his readers. Some people thought he might run Liberty a while longer and then close it up. Few people suspected he would ever let it go into other hands.

The hands that take Liberty may be just what it needs. Bernarr ("Body Love") Macfadden, as Macfadden Publications, Inc., has built up True Story Magazine in five years from an advertising revenue of $1,850,778 to $3,546,345. That he knows about circulation, too, is shown by the fact that his 13 magazines (Physical Culture, True Romance, True Detective Mysteries, etc.) have combined annual circulation of 56,000,000; Liberty's will make him third largest annual circulation-holder in the U. S.* Macfadden announced last week that Liberty's editorial policy would be continued unchanged. Just what the terms of the sale were was not learned, but this much was known: The Detroit Daily, a tabloid resembling New York's Evening Graphic, was taken by Publishers Patterson & McCormick from Mr. Macfadden in the nature of a trade. Its name will be changed to the Detroit Daily Mirror. It will be edited by City Editor Frank Carson of the New York Daily News.

*First: Curtis Publishing Co. Second: Conwell Publishing Co.

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