Philadelphia Story

One day in 1928 a smart little newspaperman named Julius David Stern, who was almost unknown outside of Camden, N. J., crossed the Delaware River to Philadelphia and with some of the money he had made from his Camden Post and Courier bought the doddering Philadelphia Record from John Wanamaker. At that time the third largest U. S. city had five listless, uncompetitive and politically hogtied papers. No good newspaperman considered Philadelphia worth a stop between Baltimore and Manhattan.

Today, newspapermen look to Philadelphia for excitement and sometimes jobs. J. David Stern is now its senior publisher. It now has only four papers (not counting the pipsqueak tabloid News) and they are engaged in a bitter struggle for survival. Reading from Left to Right, Philadelphia's papers are the morning Record and Inquirer, the evening Ledger and Bulletin. All were making news last week.

Smartest. For a while after Dave Stern went to Philadelphia he had little competition from the Record's, smug old rivals. A working newspaperman himself, he made the Record a newsman's sheet, gave it a metropolitan flair that no other paper had. He picked Roosevelt long before Chicago, shrewdly identified himself with New Deal liberalism, did more than any other man to break the Republican stranglehold on Pennsylvania and to sell civic decency to Philadelphia. He has run the Record'?, circulation from 90,000 to 218,000. His men work in a converted loft building on North Broad Street, but they get the best salaries in town. The Record was the first Philadelphia paper to sign a contract with the Newspaper Guild; the rest have followed. Record men have fun, fight the Inquirer tooth & nail for scoops. The night Huey Long was dying both papers waited for the final flash until long after the usual Sunrise edition deadline. Finally the Record staff turned out all the lights in the building. Soon the Inquirer lights, a few doors up the street, went off and the Inquirer's, staff went home. Ten minutes later came word of Huey's death. Back on went the Record lights and out in the streets went a Sunrise extra with a beat.

Last week Publisher Stern was in Manhattan winding up negotiations to sell a piece of the New York Post to City Councilman George Backer and return to Philadelphia and the Record. Milked by the Post, the Record last year lost $40,000 (which was canceled by the Camden Stern-papers' $42,000 profit) and Dave Stern could no longer afford to use it to support his ailing New York sheet. Currently he is the most harassed publisher in Philadelphia, and the man responsible for his harassment is Moses Louis Annenberg.

Toughest. Moe Annenberg hates Dave Stern with a cold, unrelenting fury. Dave Stern belongs to the uppercrust of Philadelphia Jewish society and Moe Annenberg made his money selling racing dope. Besides, Dave Stern stands between Annenberg and domination of the morning field. Although the Inquirer's, 370,000 circulation is a good deal larger than the Record's, the paper loses over $500,000 a year, has cost Publisher Annenberg an estimated $2,000,000 since he bought it from the estate of wine-bibbing, fun-loving James Elverson in 1936. Subexecutives have hung little red tags on the copy desk lamps reading "Please turn off when not in use," but Moe Annenberg remains munificent. He spends some $25,000 a week on promotion, recently had to be argued out of cutting the paper's price to 2-c- (all Philadelphia papers went from 2-c- to 3-c- last year). When some underling suggests that one of his ideas will be expensive he generally snaps: "It's my money, isn't it?"

Newest of Philadelphia's publishers, Moe Annenberg is the most feared of all. Yet in his quest for respectability he has not been unmindful of the ethics of his profession. Two months ago the Inquirer posted on its masthead the slogan: "An Independent Newspaper for All the People," and it has kept its promise of independence. It has soured on Governor James, whom it helped to elect, has roasted the Legislature for killing Philadelphia's much-needed City Charter Bill, will back a Democratic mayoralty ticket next fall if Annenberg does not like the Republican nominee. Publisher Annenberg likes to think of himself as a crusader, wound up one editorial with a neat metaphorical blend: "Political skunks can wear themselves out directing their poison gas at me. I shall continue to do my duty."

The Inquirer's, staff likes the big parties he gives and the big bonuses he hands out. His men admire him, too, for insisting that the paper run the story of his income tax troubles (TIME, May 1) on the front page. Advertisers think the Inquirer's, circulation has been inflated by $12 clocks given with ($4) subscriptions, believe it will eventually drop back to about 300,000 daily and 500,000 Sunday. (Present Sunday circulation is 1,000,000, but nearly half of that is "jackrabbit," a predated edition circulated from Maine to California--Peoria, Ill. accounts for 5,000 copies--and distributed by newsdealers who make huge profits selling Annenberg racing sheets.)

Last week Moe Annenberg went fishing in the Pike County lake where Transit Magnate Thomas Eugene Mitten was drowned in 1929. Moses L. Annenberg had no intention of drowning, but he wanted to think over a scheme to start a Camden paper in the fall. It would cost a lot of money, but it might drown David Stern.

Weakest of the four papers is the Ledger. Its circulation is only 170,000 but it makes a petty profit (for 1938, around $10,000). Publisher since the resignation, under pressure, of John Charles Martin last winter has been good-looking young Gary Bok, who with stubborn Dutch pride is determined to make a go of the paper. Two months ago Publisher Bok hired the best-publicized (by himself) city editor of his time, Stanley Walker, away from the New York Herald Tribune to be the Ledger'?, editor. Editor Walker has pepped up the Ledger'?, treatment of news, put some life into its editorial page, installed a Saturday feature called Fellow Traveler ("An Unterrified Organ for Most Folks") in which he burlesques the staid old Bulletin's, features (see below).

Most noteworthy accomplishment of the Bok-Walker regime has been to cut the Ledger loose from the Republican organization of Sun Oilman Joseph Newton Pew. Though Gary Bok hates & fears the New Deal (his brother Curtis loves it), three weeks ago the Ledger declared its independence by knocking the reactionary record of the Republican Legislature, which had rejected a City Charter Bill for Philadelphia, failed to reduce taxes and emasculated the State's labor legislation. When Joe Pew hurried down to set Publisher Bok straight, Gary Bok called in President George Kearney and Editor Walker, introduced them as "the men who are running the Ledger"

Sedatest. In the corpulent 19203 the

Philadelphia Evening Bulletin made a profit estimated at $1,500,000 a year. Nowadays its net is nearer $100,000, but it is by far the most going newspaper concern in the city. The Bulletin gets more than half of all Philadelphia's advertising revenue (its lowest milline rate is 40-c-, twice that of the other papers), has a circulation of 440,000. The nice old lady of Philadelphia journalism, the Bulletin has for many a year been distinguished for thorough, accurate and dull reporting, for full coverage of its vast circulation area (which includes South Jersey, Delaware and the Eastern Shore), for its sometimes insipid impartiality, its characteristically modest slogan ("Nearly Everyone in Philadelphia Reads the Bulletin"), its front-page jokes and weather box (including Delaware River tides), its three columns of English cartoons on the valuable back page, and its Ethical Problem letters.*

Even the Bulletin has lately been dolling herself up to meet the growing competition. Behind a new glass-brick building front diagonally facing City Hall is the most elegant, air-conditioned, soundproofed city room in the U. S. But the most significant change since Publisher (and A. P. President) Robert McLean took over after his father's death in 1931 has been in personnel. In 1936 Publisher McLean brought in an unknown ex-rewrite man from the west, Wisler Gable ("Bill") Zeamer, made him executive editor over the heads of many an oldtime Bulletin executive. Bill Zeamer has been handicapped by illness that keeps him away from work two or three days a week. Last week he chose his own assistant to carry on when he is away.

He was Dwight Stanley Perrin, assistant managing editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Burly Dwight Perrin, 51, is not only an oldtime newspaperman but the son of an oldtime newspaperman (his father, Frank Leon Perrin, is associate editor of the Christian Science Monitor). He was city editor of the New York Herald Tribune when in 1926 he went to the Post-Dispatch as assistant to famed Oliver Kirby Bovard. One of his successors at the Herald Tribune was Stanley Walker, who is now trying to oust the Bulletin as Philadelphia's No. 1 newspaper.

Musical Chairs. Cold fact about Philadelphia newspapers is that the city can support three papers but not four. The Bulletin, Ledger and Record get along fairly well together and there would be no cut-throat competition today if Moe Annenberg were not set on making himself a great publisher. But with radio advertising gaining on newspaper lineage, operating costs rising and combined circulation falling off, Philadelphia's game of musical chairs will probably continue until one of the players falls out. Plenty of Philadelphians hope it will be Moe Annenberg--especially J. David Stern.

*A last week's sample: "Sir: I want to make a complaint about Yeadon fellows. All they do is play baseball and flirt with girls. I went through Yeadon last week to see a friend and all the fellows do is to try to make strange girls. They should learn some refinement from West Philly fellows. [Signed] West Philly Girl."

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