Memphis Captured

Scripps-Howard's parent company entered Memphis 30 years ago with the Press. In 1926, the Press swallowed the News-Scimitar. Same year the powerful old morning Commercial Appeal aimed an Evening Appeal at the Press-Scimitar. Just before the Evening Appeal appeared, Editor & Publisher Charles Patrick Joseph Mooney suddenly died. Because Mr. Mooney had been a great & able editor, the Appeal papers languished without him. Promoters Luke Lea and Rogers ("We Bank on the South") Caldwell acquired the papers in 1927, milked them of cash, lost them to receivers when the Lea-Caldwell empire collapsed in 1930.

In 1933, James Thomas Hammond Jr. appeared to buy the Appeals with money loaned by "friends in the Scripps-Howard organization." His first official act was to liquidate Scripps-Howard's afternoon competition. Last week Scripps-Howard completed the capture of Memphis by coming out in the open, handing Mr. Hammond his walking papers, admitting that any literate citizen among Memphis's 156,528 whites, 96,550 Negroes who wants to read a home-town paper must henceforth do so under the Scripps-Howard flag. Claiming "the largest circulation in the South," the Commercial Appeal brings Scripps-Howard 121,992 new daily readers, 138,124 new Sunday readers, to add to the Press-Scimitar's 88,356.

Into town to take charge of the Commercial Appeal went dapper, able little John Harvey Sorrells. Scripps-Howard executive editor and troubleshooter, whose first newspaper job was as a Commercial Appeal carrier.

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