Economies

November newspaper advertising sagged 9.3% under 1936, but most publishers will be unable to reduce material and labor costs because newsprint jumps $7.50 a ton January 1 and Guild organization has turned the trend of editorial salaries upward.* But last week American Newspaper Publishers Association President James Geddes Stahlman showed his fellow members how economies can be made. His Nashville Banner has long been published each evening and Sunday. But lately it has been losing advertising to the Tennessean--in receivership for four years before Silliman Evans bought it last March--published each morning, evening and Sunday. To end a ruinous circulation and advertising fight between their rival papers, Mr. Evans, also chairman of Maryland Casualty Co., and Mr. Stahlman have formed Newspaper Printing Corp. which will solicit advertising, print and distribute both papers from a new $150,000 building. Each paper owns half the stock in the operating company, of which Mr. Stahlman is chairman, Mr. Evans president. Competition ceases, for the Tennessean has dropped its evening paper, the Banner its Sunday paper. Editorial departments retain full autonomy. Nashville carries one step farther the plan used by Publisher Roy Howard in co-operation with Scripps-Howard's Albuquerque and El Paso competitors, insists that national advertisers must use space in both the Banner and Tennessean.

Miami has also witnessed judicious pruning. Two months ago it had three dailies. John S. Knight of the Akron Beacon-Journal bought Frank B. Shutts's Herald, then decided there was room for only the Herald and James M. Cox's News to operate at a profit under present rising costs. Fortnight ago, like a move in a game of Monopoly, Mr. Knight gave Moses L. Annenberg, publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Massillon, Ohio Independent as part-payment for Mr. Annenberg's three-year-old tabloid Miami Tribune. Mr. Knight killed the growing Tribune, moved the Herald into Miami's youngest newspaper plant, the $300,000 building departing Mr. Annenberg had just put up.

*Great Northern, U. S. mill supplying less than 6% of the annual tonnage, will sell at $48 for the first six months of 1938.

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