Murder v. War

In Manhattan one Dr. A. L. Soresi started a one-man campaign exhorting the press to "stop at once all advertising and the reporting of news not essential to winning the war." Retorted the press's excitable trade organ, Editor & Publisher: "He forgets that Americans are not Germans, Italians or Japanese, accustomed to lives of grinding poverty, but a people who must have a certain amount of play mixed with their serious business, even in the midst of war."

In San Francisco, where Hearst headlines every evening vie with Scripps-Howard's, Murder and War competed for readers' attention one evening last fortnight. Late editions of Hearst's Call-Bulletin bannered in two-inch letters across the top of Page One: U.S. NAVY GIVES 15T FULL STORY OF ALASKA BATTLE. Across the top of Page One Scripps-Howard's News played: RED CARNATION MURDER! Under the News's headline was a picture of a comely blonde college coed who had been shot to death in a motorists' cabin by a lover who left a bunch of red carnations on her body.

Market Street newsvendors laid bets on whether Murder would outsell War, soon discovered that it was no contest. The score: the News's street sales jumped 2,600 copies; the Call-Bulletin, which normally outsells the News nearly 2-to-1 on newsstands, showed no gain. Crowed the News's Managing Editor Frank Clarvoe: "It was good journalism and a great escape story."

Or perhaps the test simply proved that the Navy's month-and-a-half-old communique on Alaska was not news.

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