In the Windy City

In Chicago, where name-calling among newspapers is standard practice, and practice has made performance perfect, there was a violent outburst of pot-&-kettle vituperation. The Chicago Tribune naturally figured in all of it.

"Rotten . . . Reckless." Most recent case involved the Tribune and the Sun. For days, workers at Chicago's Studebaker aircraft-engine plant had been targets of a Tribune tirade, charging that they were loafers, malingerers and gamblers and that their union leaders were Communists deliberately sabotaging production.

Sun Publisher Silliman Evans finally pot ripsnorting mad. Sun men went out to investigate. The usually meek Sun thereupon came out with these headlines: LABOR ASSAILS TRIBUNE SMEAR and TRIBUNE LIES. . . . Said the Sun: The Tribune's campaign was a "rotten and reckless piece of work ... a giant fake" born of the "fevered delusions and prejudices" of the Tribune's "hate-filled" Publisher Robert R. McCormick.

Sun readers, who for two years had been hoping for something like this, beamed.

"World's Greatest Snoozepaper." Few days before, the Tribune had been soundly clubbed by the Hearst-owned Herald-American, which had scooped the "World's Greatest Newspaper" on the diary of a young divorcee, dead apparently by her own hand. Surveying the bathetic series (Title: "Me"), the anguished Tribune roared, "Fake." Smirked the Herald-American: "The World's Greatest Snooze-paper."

When such things start Publisher McCormick breathing through his mustache, there is no telling where the Tribune's fist will fall next: it may even hit the King of England. This time it was the New York press.

"Handbills." "Some eastern Republicans," snorted the Tribune, for no apparent reason, "have shown a disposition to crawl under the furniture whenever they have been threatened with the terrible wrath of the New York Herald Tribune or even the New York Post. Why anyone should ever have feared the displeasure of such little handbills . . . is a mystery."

With its editorial the Tribune ran a list of New York City's eight dailies, complete with circulation figures. The Post was last (225,954),:the Herald Tribune sixth (293,-304). At the top: the Tribune's sister paper, the(New York Daily News (1,923,-838). As far as the Tribune, (circ. around 930,000) was concerned, that seemed to settle everything.

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