"Emory" v. "Bertie" & Click

Two big men faced each other across a big desk in the barnlike office of the Chicago Daily Illustrated Times one day not long ago.

Said Publisher Samuel Emory Thomason to his visitor: 'I want you to know, Bertie, that we're going ahead with it. . . ."

Publisher Robert Rutherford McCormick of the Tribune replied: "Well, that's your affair, Emory. But of course I'll do everything I can to protect my circulation. We can't let sentiment stand in the way. . . ."

What Publisher Thomason was going ahead with was a plan to abandon the unprofitable Saturday edition of his evening tabloid and publish instead a Sunday edition. Why did he bother to talk it over with Publisher McCormick, with whose Sunday Tribune he would compete, and not with Publisher Homer Guck of Hearst's Herald & Examiner with which he would also compete? Because Publisher Thomason was for nine years vice president and general manager of the Tribune. On the walls of Publisher Thomason's office (in the old Market Street plant where the defunct Journal used to be published) hang pictures of Col. McCormick, his managing editor Edward S. Beck, his old time circulation wrangler Max Annenberg, now publisher of the Patterson-McCormick tabloid Detroit Mirror. Sentiment? He and McCormick were classmates in the law school of Northwestern University, law partners for many years thereafter. As a Tribune executive he was reputedly the "highest paid man in the newspaper business'--$275,000 a year.

Last week, on the eve of the debut of his Sunday Times, Publisher Thomason began to learn how the Tribune and "Herex" (both priced at 10-c-) propose to protect themselves against the 5-c- tabloid. Licensed newsstands in Chicago all are built with two display shelves. Copies of the Tribune are stacked in two piles on the upper shelf; the Herex on the lower. No newsstand owner would dare disturb that arrangement without permission of either paper. All too familiar with the bloody history of Chicago's oldtime circulation wars, Publisher Thomason induced the Commissioner of Public Works to call a meeting of representatives of the three newspapers in City Hall. Angry words flew. Would the Tribune or Herex "move over" on the newsstands and admit the Times? They would not. Then, said Publisher Thomason, his newsboys would hawk his paper on corners near the newsstands.

Let there be no violence. To that, all agreed.

Three days later the first Sunday Times appeared. More than 410,000 copies of it were sold. In contrast to an early, burlier day, there was no newsstand violence.

Very few evening newspapers claim to make money on their Saturday editions. Still fewer actually do make money. Three-fourths of a metropolitan working population go home at noon; more & more businesses are adopting the five-day week; hence Saturday afternoon advertising is scanty. The Times, although it was on the verge of breaking even a year ago, last year lost $137,000 of which $123,000 was charged to Saturday editions. With an anticipated Sunday circulation of 400,000 and capacity volume pages of advertising in the first issue, Publisher Thomason looks for fat returns. (Sunday circulations: Tribune 972,414, Herex 1,036,746.)

Publisher Thomason resigned from the Tribune five years ago to go to Florida for the sake of his paralytic wife. In Tampa he and John Stewart Bryan, publisher of the Richmond, Va. News Leader, bought the Tribune. Shortly afterward Mr. Thomason returned to Chicago to buy the doddering Journal. He tried to make it a conservative evening paper like the New York Sun, failed, sold it to the Daily News but kept the Associated Press franchise by bringing out 500 copies daily of a sheetlet called the Commercial Chronicle. (Last week he had forgotten its name.) Around the A. P. membership and a skeleton staff, Publisher Thomason built his tabloid Daily Times. So friendly were he and the Tribune that he made his paper an exact copy of the Tribune's lusty Manhattan tabloid brother, the Daily News.

The Times first appeared Sept. 3, 1929, the day when the Dow Jones stock average reached its all-time high. Its first day circulation, 263,000, was the highest it ever had. Publisher Thomason based his advertising rates on an expected circulation of about 100,000, has never been able to get them adjusted to his actual circulation which is now about 200,000. Big stockholders besides Publisher Thomason include Partner Bryan, Promoter George Fulmer Getz, Publisher Henry Haven Windsor Jr. of Popular Mechanics.

To a small, intensely loyal staff Publisher Thomason is "Uncle Emory." Female secretaries in the American Newspaper Publishers' Association say "he is the nicest president we ever had." A golf enthusiast, he once played 136 holes in a day, dined immediately afterward and then lost consciousness. He enjoys a crap game but would rather play chess, always carries a pocket-size chess board when he travels. With only a few minutes to catch a train to New York for a flying trip one day he made his business manager accompany him, without baggage, so he could have a chess opponent on the train.

Most notable news exploit of the Times occurred recently in the parole of one Jesse Lucas who had been in prison 23 years for murder. Sharp-eyed Editor Richard James Finnegan read a small item in the Tribune telling of the deathbed confession of the murder by another man. He dug up two female witnesses who had testified against Lucas, got them to confess perjury. Now Lucas is out of jail, making quilts which Times girl employes are helping to sell. Meanwhile Editor Finnegan is personally presenting Lucas' case for full pardon.

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