(See front cover)
"Remember, you are the trapeze performers of the organization. On one side is the fat lady's lap, on the other side is a cage of man-eating lions and there is no net to catch you if you fall."
So chirruped Publisher Roy Wilson Howard of the Scripps-Howard chain-papers nine years ago to an enthusiastic, moonfaced subordinate named Tom Sharp who, believing that the city of El Paso, Texas needed another newspaper, but unable to persuade his chiefs, had gone to his chiefs' retired Big Chief, to "Old Man" Edward Wyllis Scripps himself, and obtained personal backing, started the El Paso Post.
Tom Sharp had been editor of the Scripps-Howard Press in Memphis. All he had asked of his chiefs was enough money for a hatful of type, one reporter and a couple of business aids. That was the scale on which Old Man Scripps started most of his papers, beginning with the Cleveland Press. But that was not the way Roy Howard and his partner Robert Paine Scripps, the Old Man's youngest son. thought things should be done in modern times.
After a year, however, the Scripps-Howard "Fat Lady" took the El Paso Post into her ample lap. And last week the dominant El Paso Post absorbed its evening competitor, the Herald, becoming the Herald-Post.
If the circumstances of the birth of the Post illustrated early Scripps-Howard characteristics, so did the purchase of the Herald exemplify later characteristics. For in just such fashion have Partners Howard and Scripps and General Manager William Waller Hawkins set about "cleaning up the territory" wherever there was one newspaper too many. Not counting merged properties they now have 25 newspapers. Sometimes, as in Akron (Times-Press), Knoxville (News-Sentinel), Memphis (Press-Scimitar) they have bought. Elsewhere, as in Des Moines, Norfolk, Terre Haute, Sacramento, they have moved out. For Scripps-Howard, no cluttered fields.
When the editors and publishers of the land hold their annual convention in Manhattan next week, of larger interest than Scripps-Howard's purchase in El Paso will be its last purchase before that. The profession will be asking about, discussing the first "shakedown" figures on the daring purchase of the New York World by the S-H chain's ace, the New York Telegram.
How the morning, evening and Sunday circulation pies of the World have been cut is shown in the following summaries, compiled from the frankest statements and shrewdest guesses available:
Pie 6 Present
Morning Pieces Totals
WORLD 400,000
Times 70,000 497,000
Herald Tribune.... 65,000 363,000
American 65,000 317,000
Daily News 50,000 1,346,000
Mirror 5,000 596,362
Evening Pie & Pieces Present Totals 276,000 World-Telegram 200,000 440,000 Sun 15,000 300,000 Journal 30.000 680.000 Post . 5,000 102,000 Sunday Now WORLD 492,000 Times 50,000 807,997 Herald Tribune. . . . 100,000 540,000 American 200,000 1,250,000 Sunday News 96,000 1,862,000