The idea of printing fiction in a newspaper is not new. W. L. George and his kindred penmen have long prospered in the back lots and less respectable areas of journalism. But to bring fiction out onto the very facade of newspaperdom, and rear it as a fake skyscraper among the tall columns of front page news, is an operation of some daring. It took place last week.
Some enterprising journalist invited Dr. Walter E. Traprock, F. R. S., S. E. U., lecturer and author of The Cruise of the Kawa, My Northern Exposure and Sarah of the Sahara, to investigate Teapot Dome. The obliging doctor is producing a series of articles which are being syndicated for the press by Hol-Nord Features. The articles are in the form of regular news stories, under Washington date line, and contain everything but a shadow of truth.
The next objective was to persuade editors to try the innovation. The daring one was Julian S. Mason, Managing Editor of The New York Tribune. Mr. Mason is a Chicagoan by birth and breeding. His first taste of journalism came at a famed educational institution in New Haven, Conn., where he became Chairman of the Yale Daily News. Strangely enough, during the last three years of Mr. Mason's stay in New Haven, Dr. Traprock was also present incognito, as one George S. Chappell.
On leaving college, Mr. Mason became a wholesale greengrocer. But not for long. In a year he got a job on the Chicago Herald, then the property of H. H. Kohlsaat. He shifted to the Chicago Tribune and then, in 1905, to the Chicago Evening Post. From 1905 to 1922 he shinnied up the Post to the altitude of Managing Editor. In March, 1922, The New York Tribune enticed him to Manhattan. There he conducts himself as a humane and kindly editor but one—in his own phrase—"not afraid of using small town stunts on a metropolitan newspaper, provided they are good."
So, through Mr. Mason, there appeared one morning, in the guise of perfect correspondent, Dr. Traprock, breaking in with a "regular story" on the front page of the Tribune. He modestly introduced himself:
WASHINGTON, Feb. 7.—Because I succeeded where all others had failed in discovering the Polynesian fatuliva with its square eggs, the red-pepper bird which flies upside down to keep its stomach cool, the hard-boiled eggplant of Gobi, etc., I was chosen this morning to discover the undiscoverable and unscrew the inscrutable in the Teapot scandal.
Thereafter in succeeding articles Dr. Traprock told of his delvings into the bowels of Teapot Dome with his great slogan "Refined Oil for Refined People."
Meanwhile the enterprising Hol-Nord Features had sold Dr. Traprock's discoveries to The Kansas City Star, The Syracuse Herald, The Ansonia (Conn.) Sentinel (summer home town of Traprock) and expected a growing demand.
It may be, also, that at about the same time Horace Greeley, great progenitor of the Tribune, turned silently in his grave.*
Survival of the Fittest