Philadelphia Story

A demise in Philadelphia newspaperdom last week underscored a harsh truism: U.S. magazine publishers have failed notoriously to publish successful newspapers. The long-sick Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger was ordered liquidated by a Federal District Court. With it disappears the last remnant of the would-be newspaper empire started 29 years ago by the late, great Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis, genius of the Satevepost, Ladies' Home Journal, etc. His empire-building had cost $42,000,000 and he had bought, started or swallowed eight newspapers with a combined peak circulation of 848,000. But, like Frank Munsey and Bernarr Macfadden, he never discovered what, besides pouring in money, makes a great newspaper tick.

Since Cyrus Curtis' death (in 1933) main Ledger problem has been to support the paper in the style to which he had accustomed it. He had fed it by buying up other Philadelphia papers (the Evening Telegraph, Press, North American) for it to devour. His heirs found the meat bill was too costly. In 1933 Stepson-in-law John C. Martin sold the New York Post (for which Curtis had paid $1,620,000 in 1923) to J. David Stern. Two years later the Philadelphia Inquirer (cost, in 1930: $18,000,000) was sold to Moe Annenberg, famed ex-Hearst tough guy, now in jail for income-tax evasion.

Retiring their fellow heir Publisher Martin, Curtis grandsons Judge Curtis and Gary Bok in 1939 staked the Ledger to more money, imported expensive Efficiencyman Guy Viskniskki and Stanley (City Editor) Walker. The Ledger that year lost $189,104. A year ago the Boks turned over the Ledger to a company headed by the New York Herald Tribune's ex-treasurer Robert Cresswell. Since then the Ledger had lost around $825,000. It died for lack of a fresh $500,000. The Curtis trustees, tired of throwing good money after bad--they claimed they had already lent Publisher Cresswell's company $1,075,000--intimated that the death of the Ledger was a mercy.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.