Kansas City Experiment

"There is no use in a fox terrier's trying to kick an elephant's teeth out. Any man would be a plain damn fool to come into Kansas City and try to fight the Star. We intend to be the second paper, but we intend to be a profitable second paper."

Speaker was a husky, 55-year-old Irishman named Harry Newman, who last week bobbed up as new publisher-editor of the 87-year-old Kansas City (Mo.) Journal. He spoke with apt awareness of the tough competition he is up against.

Not since the late great William Rockhill Nelson got the Star on its feet has a second Kansas City paper made money. For the last 20 years particularly the

Journal has been a publishers' booby trap.

Clay-tile Tycoon Walter S. Dickey, who bought the Journal in 1921, bashed in his fortune trying to buck the Star. Utility-man Henry L. Doherty, who bought 50% control in 1931, sank about $300,000 a year in the Journal (plus $250,000 a year in utility advertising). His only profit: whatever satisfaction came from his hysterical series of libel and conspiracy suits totaling $54,000,000 against the Star for its hard-hitting campaign for lower gas rates (they were thrown out in 1939).

Since Doherty 's death the Journal has been published by "Newspaper Analysts" Orville S. McPherson and Russell H. Miles. Despite livelier makeup and pace, more features, liquor ads (which the Star refuses) and New Deal ax-grinding, the Journal has not made the Doherty estate any money, has a circulation of only 80,000 -- about a fourth that of the morning or afternoon edition of the Star.

Glib Harry Newman is best remembered in Kansas City for his Christmas Reindeer Pageant, staged in 1927 with 1,000 reindeer imported from Alaska as a promotion stunt for the Star.

Onetime amateur fighter, itinerant football player (Ohio Wesleyan, Miami University, Washington & Jefferson), salesman, press agent, insurance executive, promoter of newspaper goodwill, Ohio-born Publisher Newman once published Fourth Estate (later sold to Editor & Publisher}, was organizer and first president of Columbia Broadcasting System, was the last publisher of defunct Judge. His latest publishing venture was the Senator, a Washington gossip magazine which piled up $84,000 debts in 27 issues in 1939.

Admitting that he had no money to buy the Journal, Harry Newman said only that the capital was put up by "Washington and Kansas City interests." Best information obtainable in Washington was that the paper had been bought by ex-Ambassador to Russia Joseph Edward Davies (who may be interested in preserving the Journal as a Democratic mouthpiece) for $100,000 cash.* Cagily Mr. Davies denied the report, admitted only that he had been approached.

* Only about one-third of the Journal's plant valuation alone, a figure that would net the Doherty estate a satisfactory tax loss.

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