Shadow on the Sun

To staffers of the overstaffed, New Dealing Chicago Sun, it was a sadder piece of news than the election (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). It caught Sports Editor Warren Brown as he arrived in Manhattan to cover the Army-Notre Dame game: he was fired, but could stay on as a columnist if he wanted--at lower pay. Lanky, stuttering Bascom Timmons, the Washington bureau chief, picked up a phone and heard it from Marshall Field himself: Timmons and all but four of the ten-man capital crew were through. Overseas correspondents got the word in depressing cables; city-room men got it by rumor, then by dismissal notices.

Behind the drastic shakeup, which lopped 80 names off the Sun's payroll last week, was a drastic decision. For five long years, silver-maned, gold-lined Publisher Field had patiently pumped his millions into his losing battle with the mighty Chicago Tribune, and the Trib had neither reformed nor weakened (in fact, the same day the Sun fired 80, the Trib gave its white-collar staff of 1,589 a blanket 20% raise). Field had many millions left, but he was tired of spending them. His ultimatum: the Sun must shine by itself.

Off the Soapbox. The Sun promptly merged its editorial and feature pages, dumped one of its two pages of comics, set up a new editorial policy board to ensure better coverage of the news, as well as the causes, of the day.

Said Field with an air of relief: "I've had this under consideration for some time. I've delayed it because I hated to let anyone go. ... This puts us ... where we should go into the black. I say next year, hopefully."

Marshall Field had taken a hard look at a set of hard facts. No. 1: circulation had shrunk 40,000 (to 335,000) in the three months since he raised his price to a nickel. (But Colonel Robert R. McCormick's Tribune, still 3-c-, was rocking along at a 1,100,000-a-day clip.) No. 2: newsprint, $61 a year ago, had gone up to $85 a ton. No. 3: hard-headed John S. Knight, whose Daily News is the Sun's landlord, had raised the rent $800,000 a year. (The late Daily News Publisher Frank Knox had set it low, to help Field assault the Tribune.) Finally, said Field, he personally could go on taking losses for years--but if he died, his son could not. Inheritance taxes would come first.

Fenced Out. The fourscore casualties of Field's big shake-up got double severance pay. But the left-wingers among them raised an anguished outcry: lean, thick-lensed Executive Editor Eli Zachary Dimitman, they complained, had eased them out and kept conservatives on. Actually the ax had fallen right & left. In the Sun's foreign staff of seven, only Frederick Kuh (London), Alexander Kendrick (Paris) and Virginia Prewett (Latin America) had survived. In Washington, byliners like careful, competent Carroll Kilpatrick, who covered Congress, and Labor Specialist James Free were out.

Bascom Timmons could afford to lose his $18,000 job--since he makes around $80,000 a year from 21 other papers--but he had been a charter member of the Sun's staff and had set up its capital bureau.

Executive Editor Dimitman, no crusader, but a sharp news vendor, emerged from the purge stronger than ever. Until last week, Field and the editorial writers had charted Sun policy. Now two of the five editorialists are gone, and the new board will do the navigating. Dimitman, who learned his trade under the late Moe (Daily Racing Form) Annenberg on the Philadelphia Inquirer, is on the board.

Before the dust had settled from last week's explosion at the Sun, "Dimmy" Dimitman sent a thin-lipped memo to his editors. Excerpts: "Unduly large portions of our spot-news space have been devoted to subjects featured on the editorial page. > . . I think it should be our policy to gain readers before we concentrate on educating and reforming them. We are now preaching sermons to a congregation which believes them exactly as we do. ..."

Out for the Dough. The Sun's left-handed little brother in Manhattan, PM, last week ran its first ads, in its own brave effort to pay its way. On its current small circulation (170,755), its first rate card offered no bargain. At a flat rate of 60-c- a line, it cost general display advertisers up to four times as much to reach a PM reader as it cost to talk to New Yorkers through the other eight dailies.

PM's ex-Editor Ralph Ingersoll, who went out last week when Marshall Field decided that ads would go in, rolled out to St. Louis on a lecture tour. He had, he said, three projects in mind: to be a radio commentator, to edit a national magazine, to complete four books for which he had already written the outlines. All three could wait, said he, while he retired to his farm at Lakeville (Conn.) to "do a little quiet living for a while."

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