Chicago's afternoon tabloid, the breezy, crusading, pro-Roosevelt Times, celebrated its 15th birthday last week by announcing that it had topped the Chicago Daily News in circulation for the first time (429,319 to 427,621 daily average in August). It also celebrated by gleefully reviving a triumph over its archfoe, Colonel McCormick's Chicago Tribune.
Three months before Election Day in 1936 the Tribune headlined a story from Riga, Latvia by its veteran correspondent Donald Day: "MOSCOW ORDERS REDS IN U.S. TO BACK ROOSEVELT." The Times promptly offered $5,000 for proof that the story was true. The Tribune blustered it out with a full-page ad boasting of its great "news beat," but never offered to collect the $5,000.
Last week the Times reviewed these facts in a double-column editorial, climaxed by the announcement that Donald Day last fortnight began broadcasting from Berlin as a Nazi propagandist. "P.S.," grinned the Times in conclusion, "The $5,000 offer still stands."
Marshall Field's Chicago Sun announced last week that it will henceforth print a box score of Colonel McCormick's hates. First box showed that on Sept. 6 the Tribune carried ten "hate" stories against President Roosevelt and the Administration; two against Sidney Hillman, the C.I.O. and P.A.C.; none against Hitler and the Nazis; none against Hirohito and the Japs.