Main-Street Battler

Between Zanesville and Massillon, last week, a black Lincoln Zephyr coupe zipped along U.S. 21. At its wheel was Earl J. Jones, the nation's newest chain-newspaper publisher. Eleven years before, Jones had rolled along U.S. 21 at the wheel of a truck that carried all of his few personal belongings. He was then a cattle dealer in bankruptcy, had dropped the name of Ralph Alonzo Stilwell to become Earl Jones, and was hunting a WPA job for himself. He found it at Zanesville.

Three weeks ago Earl Jones purchased the Massillon Independent (circ. 11,858) for "around $400,000." The seller was Philadelphia's Walter Annenberg. Publisher Jones promptly announced that the Independent and the Zanesville News (circ. 13,006), which he started four and a half years ago, would be links of a new chain of Ohio dailies. He detailed no plans, but those who knew of his operations in Zanesville expected nothing less than revolutions.

Soon after his arrival in Zanesville, Earl Jones turned from WPA trucking to coal hauling, then bought into a coal mine. He added other mines for a total output of about one million tons a year, which he sells to one electric-power station. The onetime trucker installed a belt conveyer that does away with most trucking.

In 1939 Zanesville awoke to a sudden newspaper fight. Jones was building a plant to "run the Litticks out of town." The late William 0. Littick and his two sons had long had a monopoly in the morning Times Recorder (circ. 19,957), the evening Signal (circ. 6,974) and the Sunday Times-Signal (circ. 11,863). The Litticks fought back by taking up United Press and International News Service, along with their Associated Press membership. But until lately, when his News got U.P., Jones managed with Transradio News alone. He carried on a running battle in type. He has lost one physical skirmish: when he struck a Signal photographer, the Signal man bashed Jones over the head with the camera (see cut).

Earl Jones, sandy, stout, fiftyish, extended his brawling up & down Zanesville's main street. He fought with an automobile dealer by buying a rival agency. He threatened to start a department store when two merchants failed to advertise with him, warned that he would go into the theater business if movie exhibitors did not buy News space. They did. When a large drugstore stopped advertising, Jones bought a rival store a few doors away. He spends part of most days behind its counters, and there he frequently entertains soldiers at dinner with his third wife (whose Lincoln Zephyr is a pale blue sedan). Earl J. Jones has given the Litticks and Zanesville plenty to think about. Last week he was the subject of juicy comment in Massillon and by editors all over the State.

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