The Urge to Merge

The Urge to Merge U. S. newspapers, unlike the people who read them, are growing fewer in number. In almost every city, the urge to merge, to kill one newspaper for the profit of an, other, is strong. Chicago once had five morning newspapers; now it has only two, the opulent Tribune and Hearst's Herald and Examiner.* Cleveland, with more than a million inhabitants, has only one morning newspaper, two evening. The climax of the urge to merge is the city with a complete newspaper monopoly--a morning-evening-Sunday paper under the ownership of one man or corporation. Des Moines, Iowa, has such a newspaper. It is owned by an aggressive young Harvard graduate, John Cowles, and his father. Its morning and evening editions have different names, but the monopoly is complete-- the result of several consolidations. Castigators have often said that a monopoly breeds stagnation--not to mention other moral evils--but in Des Moines, the Cowles are spending more money in putting out an alert, progressive paper than, others do in fighting competitors. Old and famed as a morning-evening-Sunday newspaper is the Kansas City Star (in the morning it is called the Times). The Times and the Star are as essential to Kansas City as coffee for breakfast and napkins for dinner. Kansas City, Mo., has some 385,000 inhabitants; but the Times and the Star, covering a wider field, have a combined daily circulation of almost exactly 500,000. Their only competitor has been the morning-evening-Sunday combination of the Dickeys, father and son. Last fortnight, the Dickeys discontinued their morning paper, threw all their efforts into their evening-Sunday paper, calling it the Journal-Post. Again and again the question is asked: Will all cities the size of Des Moines or Kansas City or Milwaukee or even Cleveland have eventually just one 24-hour, seven-day newspaper--a monopoly which supplies news as the electric light company supplies "juice"?

--There is also the Chicago Journal of Commerce for businessmen.