Death in Los Angeles

When Clinton D. McKinnon, a successful San Diego publisher and businessman, bought the debt-ridden Los Angeles Daily News a year ago, he cheerily admitted that his main objective was to "push the undertaker away from the door." The task was harder than McKinnon realized. In Los Angeles, where five dailies battle for circulation, former Democratic Congressman McKinnon hoped to win readers with the only paper that "reflected the policies of the Democratic Party." But this week the undertaker came in the door.

Unable to pay $90,000 in wages to his 600 employees, McKinnon shut down the 31-year-old News. He sold its name and many of its features and circulation lists to Publisher Norman Chandler of the Los Angeles Times and Mirror. The price was only enough for the News to pay back wages and back federal taxes. McKinnon had expected to get $500,000 in new money from a group headed by Robert K. Straus, a member of the family that controls R. H. Macy (TIME, Nov. 8). But last week Straus and his group backed out. In Los Angeles, the death of the paper was good news for Chandler's money-losing Mirror and Hearst's ailing Herald & Express. They are left to battle alone in the city's afternoon field.

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