Kobler's Dreams

The American Weekly is the Sunday supplement of the 28 Hearst newspapers. Advertisers are invited to regard it as a sort of magazine. It has a circulation of 25,000,000 (Saturday Evening Post has less than 3,000,000). Its advertising rate is $16,000 per page. Its contents are entirely lurid: huge pictures and meaningless text about the scandals of Europe's lesser nobility, dinosaurs, spooks, freaks of science, etc. Eleven years ago, Publisher Hearst, despairing of selling advertising in such a thing, offered to give one Albert J. Kobler a big commission for every advertisement sold. From this commission, Salesman Kobler soon derived a five and then a six figure income. Last week, over the signature of Mr. Kobler, a curious full-page advertisement appeared in New York newspapers. It read, in part:

"DOWN THE PILOT'S LADDER

"The American Weekly has found its place and made its case. . . . But neither my temperament nor career can be satisfied with a situation that hereafter demands so little personal action. My energies and imagination must have fuller play. . . . And so I have tendered my resignation, turned the ship back to its captain. With this statement I climb down the pilot's ladder to an argosy of dreams. I am now the proprietor of a New York daily. . . . I only bespeak the patience of friends and public for time to 'Build My Rome.' "

And who is Rome-builder Kobler? He is nearly 52 years old and has never been a newspaper reporter. He dresses smartly, carries a malacca stick, and speaks in a Milt Gross accent. He lives in one of the largest apartments on Park Avenue, Manhattan. Once, his charming wife expressed a fancy for square jewels; he bought for her an emerald both square and huge. Typical of him is the fact that when he first asked Mr. Hearst for the American Weekly advertising job he pulled out a fist-full of advertising contracts already signed and at a higher rate. He got the job. He is also the man who nourished the straw hat industry. He suggested (and carried on a campaign through the Hearst papers) that men begin wearing straw hats 15 days earlier in the season. So successful was he that the present U. S. consumption of straw hats per year per adult male is two, as compared with the pre-Kobler era of one and a half.'

Mr. Kobler's new "argosy of dreams" is the New York Daily Mirror. This was the Hearst tabloid, although it has been temporarily "owned" by U. S. Ambassador to Peru Alexander Pollock Moore.

The circulation of the Mirror is some 400,000. Recently it has been the least sensational of the three New York tabloids. Mr. Kobler plans no immediate editorial changes. Walter Howey will continue as editor.