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The next few hours were chaos for managing editors. Hearst executives were frantic; offered fat sums (reputedly $5.000) for a print. They wired "The Chief" in California, even besought Grandfather Dwight Morrow to intercede for them. More furious, if possible, was Capt. Joseph Medill Patterson, publisher of the Daily News. Heatedly but futilely he demanded that A. P. General Manager Kent Cooper obey the A. P. rules, supply the News with a picture.
Col. Lindbergh apparently had won, could gloat over the predicament of the papers he had long craved to chastise. But his triumph did not live long. Newsmen have devices with which he had not reckoned.
An A. P. courier, rushing packets of pictures to be put aboard trains at Grand Central Terminal, was accosted by a breathless, officious youngster. "Hey, wait! The office made a mistake—let's see your bundle. Yeh—they put two in for the Hartford Courant instead of one. Okay, I'll take the extra one back to the office. S'long."
Late that night the News appeared with a full front-page picture of Baby Lindbergh (and with the comment that the baby looked less like its father than like its mother). This News picture looked exactly like the pose given the A. P. It bore no credit line. A few hours afterward the Mirror, American, Journal and Graphic were on the streets, each flaunting a front-page picture apparently identical to the one in the News. The four papers quoted no source, but one way of obtaining the picture would have been to photograph the front-page of the News.
Friends of Publisher Patterson of the News know him for a good sportsman, a fair fighter. They wondered what his mental processes were when, three days after the baby-picture episode, the Daily News performed what looked like as spiteful a piece of journalism as has lately been performed in the U. S.:
A big Curtiss Condor biplane, taxiing to its hangar at a Long Island airport, suddenly ground looped, plowed into a crowd of holiday spectators. The whirling propellers killed a man and a wife. The plane bore the insignia of T. A. T.-Maddux Air Lines. Col. Lindbergh is technical adviser of T. A. T.-Maddux. Daily News screamed in full width headlines: LINDBERGH LINER KILLS 2.
Riddance
Last week appeared in Printers' Ink and Editor & Publisher a large advertisement: 'Paterson, N. J. Press-Guardian is in receiver's hands and has suspended publication. . . . The Paterson Evening News is now the only evening paper in Paterson, N. J. Circulation 30,000 daily. . . ."
Behind this gloating announcement was the story of a battle which began soon after the Publisher-Brothers Ridder went to Paterson in June last year. The Ridder Brothers* — Bernard Herman, Victor Frank, Joseph Edward (TIME, July 1, 1929)—bought the Paterson Press-Guardian from William B. Bryant. The Evening News at that time trailed the Press-Guardian with 14,000 circulation. The Call, a morning paper, led with 21,000.