PM Publicity

Upwards of a year ago tall, bald, shambling Ralph McAllister Ingersoll, onetime publisher of TIME, set out to found a new New York City newspaper, PM. Five months ago he completed the herculean job of raising $1,500,000 capital. Last week, ready to launch his paper, he had successfully whipped up an almost unprecedented amount of advance publicity. Even out of hiring a staff he got publicity: he launched a prize contest through the Museum of Modern Art to select staff artists; columnists printed gags and gossip as he picked up his staff one by one.

Publisher Ingersoll also bought time on the air to broadcast weather reports sponsored by PM, wangled radio interviews for members of his staff, found them spots on quiz programs (this week Editor Ingersoll himself is a guest on Information Please). He topped his campaign off last fortnight by full-page advertisements in New York newspapers. Wrote Walter Winchell as the ballyhoo piled up:

"We don't want to jinx anybody . . . but . . . the last publication which got oceans of free advance publicity was Ken." (Founded by Esquire in 1938, dead 16 months later.)

Meanwhile PM circularized the public by mail, describing the 5-c- afternoon picture paper--with local news, foreign news and national news segregated in departments; without advertising (but with digests of advertising from other papers)--which it proposed to issue. In an advertisement last week it claimed to have got back 173,006 cards authorizing newsdealers to begin delivering PM at readers' doors with its first issue this week. To those who had returned cards PM sent a "preview edition," Vol. I, No. 0.

Slightly smaller in dimensions than regular tabloids, it gave about 35% of its space to pictures. Its 32 pages were stapled together and its front page had a brown border, with logotype and box at the left side. Within the border was a three-column headline and a picture. On the whole, PM looked and read more like a cross between a newspaper and a magazine than like a newspaper hot off the wires.

As PM started, another pictorial, departmentalized, 5-c- newspaper stalled. Newsdaily of Hartford, Conn., founded by Bice Clemow three months ago, announced suspension of publication until September. It blamed "the terror of lightning warfare" for upsetting its prospects.

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