T. P.

When William Randolph Hearst discontinued his unprofitable Rochester Journal last year, 400 men and women lost their jobs on 24 hours' notice, the Rochester newspaper field was left to the morning Democrat and Chronicle and the evening Times-Union, both owned by restless Roosevelt-Baiter Frank Ernest Gannett. The homeless Hearstlings decided that they and Rochester could use an independent daily. This week, after a year's hunt for financial backers, the first issue of the Rochester Evening News, edited by Roosevelt-Backer David Edwin Kessler, appeared on the streets.

The News will carry features of North American Newspaper Alliance, United Feature, Bell Syndicate; but for general news it will rely solely on Transradio Press Service. While the choice of Transradio was dictated by economy rather than preference, for Transradio Press the event is a milestone: never before in its turbulent four-year history has a daily in a big U. S. city used it exclusively.

Transradio President Herbert Samuel Moore, 33, had reason to be pleased. Four years ago, former U. P. Correspondent Moore found himself jobless when Columbia Broadcasting System abandoned its news service to join National Broadcasting Co. in the Press-Radio Agreement which limited news broadcasts to twice-daily, five-minute summaries supplied by Associated Press, United Press and Inter national News Service. Moore, deciding to buck this restriction, got financial backing, started Transradio as an independent service with no publishing or broadcasting affiliations. "We are fighting for freedom of the press of the air," he announced.

Within a year, Transradio news was being barked over more than 90 stations. Soon it was clear that the upstart agency had upset the plans of the publishers and press associations to limit news broadcasting. U. P. and I. N. S. decided to sell their news to commercial radio sponsors; within A. P., agitation for a similar plan was begun.

Today, Transradio news goes by teletype and radiotelegraph to 288 radio stations. It boasts an impressive list of beats, such as the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. In 1936, it began serving newspapers, today sells to 46, including the London Daily Telegraph, the Portland Oregonian, the Honolulu Advertiser and the Johannesburg (South Africa) Daily Express. Its 20-hour-a-day teletype circuit distributes 40,000 words of spot news. An editorial staff of 40 works in its main office in a Manhattan penthouse. Its 34 U. S. and foreign bureaus are operated by 132 editorial workers.

The feeling of a perpetual crusade which Transradio has created is helped by its preoccupation with "a completely modern style of newswriting" that aims to be "instantly readable and listenable." President Moore, whose hobbies are supercharged foreign cars and "revolutionary word forms in poetry," abjures the orthodox "who, what, when, where" formula. His reporters must give all the facts, but not necessarily in the first paragraph. They must tell their story "the way a man would break the news to his wife that the boss had given him a raise."

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