Chicago Front

Never quiet for long is the Chicago newspaper battlefront. What is ordinary competition in another city, in Chicago publishing is fierce warfare; not literally bloody, as it was years ago, but scarcely less bitter. Last fortnight witnessed the opening barrage of what promises to be a major autumn engagement between Tribune (morning) and Daily News (evening), with Herald & Examiner and tabloid Times sniping here & there like guerrillas. The Tribune's salvo was a reduction in advertising rates, local and national, for the first time in its history.

The campaign actually dates back nearly a year to the time when Col. William Franklin ("Frank") Knox, onetime Hearst chieftain, became publisher of the News. Quietly the News began plugging away at the Tribune's supreme position in local advertising. When the figures were tabu lated for the first six months of this year, they revealed the six-day News leading the Tribune (exclusive of the Tribune's Sun day edition) in national advertising for the first time. Also for the first time the News had, in certain months, more retail advertising than the Tribune's daily & Sunday combined. The Tribune's rate cut (which it called a ''discount'') followed last fortnight. Chicago merchants applauded. But last week they gave the News 50% more advertising than the Tribune. While this was going on, the Tribune was shouting to the public not about advertising but about circulation. In full page displays it announced: "The Facts About Chicago Circulation. . . . The Chicago Tribune now has more daily circulation than the News and Herald & Examiner combined, and more daily circulation than the American, Post and Times together." The News fired back two days later with an advertisement headed: "The Facts About Results from Chicago Circulation." It quoted the six-months advertising figures, made much of the claim that "96% of the Daily News circulation goes right into the natural 40-mile Chicago trading area ... and NONE OF IT GOES INTO SCATTERVILLE." By "Scatterville" the News meant the Tribune's boasted "Chicagoland" circulation in Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio and outer Illinois.

The up-&-coming little Times talked back, too. It reprinted the Tribune's circulation boast, adding that on that day "The Tribune printed 18,154 lines less advertising than on the same day last year. The Daily Times printed 2,267 lines more advertising than on the same day last year."

In the Daily News, Col. Knox found fertile field for the economy tactics which earned him first the favor, then the disfavor of Publisher Hearst. He junked the News's costly midweek pictorial, curtailed its far-flung foreign service. Two months ago he cut salaries from 10% to 25%. In all he is reputed to have lopped nearly $1,000,000 a year from the paper's expenses. One result, which followed just three weeks after the salary cut, was a surprise payment of three back quarterly dividends of $1.75 to preferred stockholders, as well as the new dividend due. In addition, a $1 dividend was paid on 400,000 shares of common stock. During the year some $500,000 worth of bonds were retired. News preferred stock leaped from $40 to $60.

Editorially Col. Knox has made the paper fresher, breezier, has gone after the newsstand buyer with pretty-girl pictures and sports news on front and back pages. Also, he has made it a loyal Administration organ.

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