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Stocks & Surprise. Patterson was an all-out isolationist before World War II, and his paper ran little foreign news until the start of the war. Today, says Executive Editor Richard Clarke, 64, "we find ourselves giving a hell of a lot of space to foreign affairs because that's what the public 'is interested in." Patterson's towering editorial rages have largely disappeared, and his quiddities, which persisted out of habit, now seem to be receding. (Although he supported Franklin Delano Roosevelt for three elections, the captain got so mad at F.D.R. just before Pearl Harbor that his paper's persistent anti-Roosevelt editorials estranged the two old friends.) The paper has become conventionally Republican now—and even peaceable. "Certainly nobody can criticize us for being beastly to John Kennedy," says Clarke. "We're pleasantly surprised by the young man."
The crime stories smell a little purer today, the crusades run a little longer, the bathing beauties show a little less skin; and it is not likely that the News will ever sneak another camera into Sing Sing prison to snap an execution, as it did in 1928 when Murderess Ruth Snyder was electrocuted.
But all in all, says Clarke, "I think Mr. Patterson would like the looks of the News." Its rivals think it has lost a lot of its old zip, but it still holds the loyalty of an awful lot of straphangers, and still boasts twice the circulation of any other paper in the U.S.
* With his cousin, Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, then president of the Chicago Tribune. They got their starting stake through their mothers, who controlled the Tribune's treasury and peeled off enough of it to launch the Daily News.