Home Paper

Brooklyn is the only U. S. community of 2,500,000 population which has no morning newspaper. Like Oakland, Calif, on the other edge of the continent, a large part of its working populace commutes every day to the metropolis across the water. As Oaklanders read San Francisco morning papers on the ferries, so do Brooklynites read Manhattan papers in subways and elevateds. Both towns are ideal for evening "home" papers.

Few weeks ago there were three important evening papers in Brooklyn,* two of them published by outsiders--Frank Ernest Gannett's Eagle, Paul Block's Standard Union. Last week there were two, both home-owned. Chain-Publisher Gannett a month ago had let the revered Eagle revert to the Hesters and Gunnisons, oldtime Brooklyn families from whom he had bought it. Last week Chain-Publisher Block sold his Standard Union to the up-&-coming Brooklyn daily Times with which it was immediately consolidated. The Times's publisher is Fremont Carson ("Monty") Peck, 33, who inherited the paper from his father, a distinguished Brooklynite.

Compared with the long fame of the Eagle, the Times is unknown outside of Brooklyn. Yet the circulations of both papers are around 100,000. It was not always so. When the late Carson C. Peck, vice president of F. W. Woolworth Co., bought it in 1912, the Times was the small neighborhood organ of the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. (An early editor was William Cullen Bryant.) Mr. Peck acquired it because he was approaching the Woolworth retirement age of 60 and wanted something to do. At the same time the Eagle was practically the daily Bible of Brooklyn's quiet, aristocratic, somewhat provincial families.

By the time "Monty" Peck was graduated from Princeton in 1920 he found a different Times and a different Brooklyn. John H. Harman, who had administered the paper since the elder Peck's death in 1915, had moved its plant to a business centre of the city (now Times Plaza) and increased its circulation to some 15,000. The Eagle was still dominant but youthful Publisher Peck thought he saw its influence slipping. New subways and new bridges had brought many thousands of Manhattan workers to live in Brooklyn. Apartment houses were popping up to replace the genteel old residences of Brooklyn Heights. Brooklyn aristocrats were disappearing, out down Long Island or across to swank Manhattan.

Publisher Peck, while continuing to move among Brooklyn aristocrats in town and out at Locust Valley, decided to gear his paper to the white-collar middle class, and he proceeded to pour money into it. He made the Times a typical "home"' paper, unsensational, non-crusading, bursting with local news and civic pride. He initiated a costly carrier delivery service, then an innovation in Greater New York (since copied by other Brooklyn papers). In less than ten years the Times reached 100,000 circulation. The Eagle still has more than twice as much advertising, but last year it lost 750,000 lines while the Times gained about a million.

Meanwhile the Standard Union, which had been aiming at virtually the same class of reader and advertiser, slipped steadily backward. Recognizing the duplication, Publisher Peck tried to buy the competing paper at public auction in 1926, finally got it last week. Its circulation was 35,700.

However he may lament the fine old Brooklyn that was. Publisher Peck is wisely loyal to the bustling Brooklyn of the present and future. Much more a businessman than a newsman he is a director of Brooklyn's Chamber of Commerce, trustee of the City Savings Bank, the Children's Aid Society. He is also a director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, member of many a school board including that of ancient Polytechnic Preparatory ("Poly Prep") Country Day School whence he went to Princeton. One of his largest interests is his work as treasurer of Carson C. Peck Memorial Hospital, built by his mother in memory of his father.

Like another young Princeton publisher --Knowlton Lyman ("Snake") Ames Jr. of the Chicago Post--"Monty" Peck perpetually carries a cigar in his mouth, even when he plays golf, which he does well. Also like "Snake" Ames, when Publisher Peck diverts himself, at golf, hunting or fishing, he gives the impression of keeping one part of his brain at work on the job which he supposedly left behind him.

Fremont Carson Peck got his first names from his uncle Fremont and his father, originally named Christopher Carson. They were so named simply because Christopher ("Kit") Carson and John Charles Fremont were heroes of their parents' day.

* A fourth Brooklyn paper, the Citizen, is relatively unimportant.

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