Wilkes-Barre Experiment

Since October 1, 1938, when Newspaper Guildsmen walked out on city-wide strike, no daily newspaper has been published in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., a coal-mining and silk-weaving city whose retail stores serve about 300,000 persons. Deprived of their No. 1 advertising medium, the five biggest Wilkes-Barre stores have distributed a weekly "Shoppers Bulletin" to 73,000 homes. (Total circulation of the dormant evening News, Times-Leader and morning Record: 73,000.) Smaller stores have combined to publish a 24-page tabloid "Buyers Guide" with about 53.000 circulation, which also takes paid classified ads. By agreement, no local merchant is advertising in Scranton and other out-of-town newspapers sold in Wilkes-Barre. One store has tried radio bingo and quizzes to bring in business.

Thus the strike had set up a perfect laboratory in which to test the most cherished and vital belief of all U. S. newspaper publishers: that local business cannot get along without them. Alarming result: it has gotten along quite well. In December, for instance, the bigger stores reported business up 6% over 1937; in January and February it was down 7% to 9% from 1938, about the same as in big-advertising New York City. At the same time merchants have saved up to 50% on their promotion and advertising budgets.

Part of this rosy picture has been due to a midwinter anthracite boom, and in Scranton, 19 miles away, retail trade has been a little better than in Wilkes-Barre. But this was pretty cold comfort to U. S. newspaper publishers, whose associations remained discreetly silent on the matter last week.

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