(6 of 9)
We want the papers to be educational, not pedantic or in the manner of textbooks, but in sensing ahead of the public the things of coming significance.
—John Cowles, Jr.
Circulation 211,000 mornings. 655,000 Sundays. Independent. Has supported Republicans for President since 1932.
Few papers work harder than the Minneapolis Tribune at expanding the boundaries of reader interest. A Tribune suggestion in 1960 caught the eye of Minnesota's U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey, who took it to Washington—where John F. Kennedy put it into effect as the Peace Corps. The Tribune's able science reporter, Victor Cohn, produced a farsighted series on Russian science in 1951—six years before Sputnik. For 24 years, the paper has been urging its readers away from Midwestern isolationism with a world-consciousness that is the projection of globetrotting Publisher John Cowles. He yielded leadership to his son John Jr., 34, in 1960, and young Cowles seems more than competent to keep the paper where it likes to be: a step or two ahead of the whole state. Indeed, the Tribune continues to serve as a Minnesota model for good journalism. Says Publisher. Vernon Vance of the Worthington Daily Globe: "Local dailies have had to raise their standards to stay in business."
DAILY NEWS
This paper's run for the readers, and we don't give a hoot in hell whether it pleases other newspapers or editors or makes them sick. We're for the general public, its likes and dislikes, its peeves and aspirations.
—Daily News Editorial
Circulation 211,000 mornings. 655,000 Sundays. Independent. Supported Roosevelt for three terms; has since endorsed Republican candidates for President.
Captain Joseph Medill Patterson, founder of the New York Daily News, had a sure instinct for the reading tastes of subway riders (he was one), and he built his tabloid into the biggest and most prosperous daily in the U.S. Some detractors say the News got there by peddling only the most marketable wares—crime, sex, sob stuff and baby pictures—with professional skill. But even the sober New York Times could take lessons from the News's equally professional ability to cut the "important but dull" story down to size. The News reader gets just about everything in the lively, abbreviated style suitable to someone being jolted underground from The Bronx to midtown. The Times and other papers might well take further lessons from News editorials, which are usually short, sometimes outrageous, but always understandable. The News's editorial page pulls a thumping 60% of its readers—well above the national average—by offering some of the liveliest reading fare in the country. When not venting its spleen on its favorite villain ("Killer Khrushchev," "the butcher of Hungary and Ukraine," "Red Hitler"), the News indulges its own peeves, such as the United Nations ("throw the bums out"), or directs a fervent plea to American ingenuity to solve a serious technical problem: how to keep small boys' trousers zippered all the way up. Joe Patterson is dead. But in handpicked successors such as News President Francis M. Flynn, the captain made sure that his irrepressible and incorrigible tabloid would go on appealing to the largest crowd in the U.S.