The Press: Like the Arabs

A bad year for the newspaper business was 1939. Europe’s war sent U. S. circulations soaring in September. But labor has gone up, newsprint is higher, State and Federal taxes have steadily mounted. Advertising revenues have gone down. A modern newspaper must have a leased wire service, color comics, syndicated columns to build its circulation. All these come high. With one week still to go, 1939 had seen the end of 75 daily newspapers, 25 more than in 1938.

Many a small town (e.g., Kelso, Wash., Nashville and Clarksville, Ark., Ukiah, Calif.) was left without any daily, dependent on papers from big cities near by. In several cities (e.g., San Diego) the only papers that remain are owned by one publisher. Of the 75 that folded, eleven disappeared by merger, 64 simply folded.