Chip & Block

Like his famed humorist father, Will Rogers Jr., 40, has tried his hand at many things. The year his father died, he gave up polo playing and, at 23, bought the Beverly Hills weekly Citizen. He turned it into a fat (20-42 pages), successful, community semiweekly, whose four editions now have more than 40,000 readers. He was elected to Congress, and during World War II, quit politics to become an artillery officer. Last year he tried his hand at the movies, played his father in The Story of Will Rogers.

Last week Publisher Rogers announced that, after 18 years, he was finally leaving the Citizen to devote his time to being a movie actor. He sold the paper for an undisclosed amount to two oldtime, small California publishers, Lowell E. Jessen and Roy A. Brown, who may turn the paper into a daily. Said Will Jr.: "A man can't be in two places at once. I found to my surprise that making a movie is a full-time occupation. You can't make even one movie a year and operate a newspaper, too." His next Warner Bros, picture: The Boy from Oklahoma, a western, in which he foils the villains with lassoes instead of guns.

Another West Coast newspaper got a new boss last week. With the death of Publisher Philip Jackson of Portland's Oregon Journal (circ. 192,249), his mother, 90-year-old Maria ("Ria") Jackson, named General Manager William W. Knight, 44, the new Journal boss. Spry, autocratic Ria Jackson, who ran the paper for years and still keeps an eye on it, also scotched rumors that Publisher Samuel I. Newhouse, owner of Portland's morning Oregonian (circ. 225,421) and nine other dailies, was going to buy the Journal. Said Mrs. Jackson: "I want Portland and all the world to know that the Journal has not been and is not for sale."

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