(See front cover)
A newspaper publisher could if he would put in the entire second half of April hobnobbing in hotel lobbies; perching on gilt chairs in improvised conference halls; rising to perfunctory votes of thanks; hoisting highballs in smoke-filled rooms; puffing after-dinner cigars while the tri-colored dessert melts, the ice-water turns tepid, the cigaret butts float in the coffee saucers, and the speaker of the evening warms to his subject of "Freedom of the Press." For the last half of April traditionally is the season when men of the Press come together to talk about their business.
That such meetings rarely make exciting news is the publishers' own fault. They carry on their liveliest business behind closed doors, indulge in "off the record" discussions which newspapers obediently refrain from reporting. For public consumption they hand out reports and speeches viewing with alarm familiar bogeys, congratulating themselves on "vigilance," calling for cooperation, closer understanding, etc., etc.
This year's meetings of Associated Press and American Newspaper Publishers Association were bound to be an exception, due to at least three issues too hot to be disposed of entirely in private. One was the NRA newspaper code which expires June 15. Another was the question of letting down the bars against radio news broadcasting. Third and hottest of all was Wirephoto and John Francis Neylan.
Wirephoto is the Associated Press's system for flashing newspictures around the country by telephone wire. It serves 39 of the AP's 1,340 member newspapers, in 24 large cities. Those 39 underwrite the $1,000,000-a-year cost of getting pictures from any distance in about ten minutes (TIME, May 7; Jan. 14). When the project, secretly negotiated, was revealed at last year's AP meeting, two delegates fumed with rage. One was John Francis Neylan, brainy, brawny counsel for William Randolph Hearst, who holds 19 AP memberships. The other was peppery little Roy Wilson Howard (Scripps-Howard Newspapers), who has six. Lawyer Neylan roared at the AP management for "the most unjustifiable extravagance in the history of journalism." But Wirephoto supporters promptly pointed out that both he and Publisher Howard represented competing picture services— Hearst's International and Scripps-Howard's Acme.
Beaten by ballots, Hearst's Neylan, a tenacious, fighting Irishman, was barely home in San Francisco from the convention last year when he started to load his guns for a return battle in 1935. In June he broadcast a voluminous letter to all AP members inviting them to help him force the AP management to rid itself of Wirephoto. Alternatives: drop it entirely or turn it back to American Telephone & Telegraph Co. to be operated by the latter for all the U. S. Press, with losses guaranteed by the four existing big picture agencies (AP, International, Acme, Wide World). From responses to that letter, Lawyer Neylan plotted his offensive. Last March he trundled his artillery into the open—a "Membership Proxy Committee of Twenty-five," hell-bent to split last week's convention wide open.