Demise

That desirable thing, a monopoly, last week fell into the lap of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The small but amiable Cleveland Times, its only competitor in the morning field of a city with a million citizens, died, as a local colyumist said, "after a long sickness." The Plain Dealer took over the good will and list of subscribers (about 20,000). There was no announcement of a sale, but it was not unreasonable to suppose that the monopoly was worth perhaps a, quarter of a million. President Samuel Scovil of the company that published the Times signed a wistful valedictory to the effect that just a little more advertising would have made successful the five-year effort to establish a clean, unsensational "visitor in the home."

The event caused no great excitement on the long shore of Lake Erie. As a "visitor in the home" the Times had been more notable for naivete than for force or brilliance. But newspaperdom watched the movements of the Times's unhorsed chief, Publisher-Editor Earle Martin, whose transfer from the Scripps-Howard Cleveland Press last summer had given rise to the notion that the Plain Dealer was to have a worthy competitor (TIME, June 14). Earle Martin, onetime crack editor of the Scripps-Howard syndicate, was now at large again. . . . Earle Martin bought railroad tickets to Florida, said he was going fishing.