Knight to Chicago

More than any other city except New York, vigorous, slam-bang Chicago has contributed its newspaper flavor and traditions to U.S. journalism. In the Chicago tradition are bloody circulation wars, roughshod crime reporters, brawling editorial pages, fierce competition in getting and selling the news. Last week a man with a winning streak stepped into what he called this "hardball league." From the estate of the late Frank Knox he bought (for $2,151,537.88 cash) control of the Daily News.

By his purchase of the fourth largest U.S. afternoon paper (circ. 434,938),* trim, balding John Shively Knight became one of the nation's most potent publishers. He was already one of the most prosperous. His Akron Beacon-Journal, Miami Herald and Detroit Free Press are smoothly run, highly profitable.

Success Story. Knight, who is 50 this week, had come up fast in eleven years. Starting as an ad-taker and reporter, with time out for service in World War I as lieutenant and air observer, he had run two small Ohio papers, finally became managing editor of his father's Akron Beacon-Journal. But until his father died in 1933, no one in Akron noticed much about Cornell-trained Jack Knight except that he was a pleasant fellow with a flair for good clothes and winning at golf. His father's death left the Beacon-Journal with a load of depression debt. Akron gossiped: "This will be the end of the Beacon; Jack doesn't know how to settle down and work."

Jack Knight heard the gossip and took it to heart. Making good in his home town became the challenge. His program: get out of debt, then pay as you go. The Knight success story is impressive:

P:In Akron he set up a rich monopoly (estimated yearly earnings above $700,000) by trading Scripps-Howard out of town in 1938, upped circulation from 72,524 to 125,851.

P:In Miami he is taking an estimated $500,000 yearly profit on a $2,500,000 stake (plus $1,000,000 that eliminated the late Moe L. Annenberg's Tribune from competition); has boosted circulation from 45,557 to 103,858.

P:In Detroit in four years he paid off more than $3 million in notes on the once arch-conservative Free Press; whipped circulation up from 296,047 to 369,047.

P:In London, in 1943, he was an able, diplomatic chief liaison officer between the U.S. Office of Censorship and the British censors.

P: In 1944 he is the aggressive president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, seeking a practical way to do something about world freedom of the press (TIME, July 3).

Great Traditions. In Chicago, Knight bought control of several things he did not want: a paper which in recent years had been going downgrade in influence, had been losing circulation to the yeasty Times; a 25-story building (with a $4,933,000 mortgage); a company with a top-heavy financial structure (and a direct debt of $1,691,000 on the paper itself); a business whose profits had fallen off dangerously.

But the attractions outweighed the handicaps. The News still has prestige as a sort of "New York Times of the Midwest," largely due to its voluminous, generally excellent foreign coverage. It has a tradition of good writing sprung from such ex-Newsmen as Eugene Field. George Ade, Carl Sandburg, Ben Hecht. And it has a tradition of independence that reaches back to its late great founder, Melville E. Stone. A good man could restore its greatness.

The News began acquiring some new traditions promptly when Jack Knight took charge. Barrel-shaped, fast-moving Basil L. ("Stuffy") Walters, the crack newsman whom Knight had hired away from the Cowles brothers in Minneapolis, rolled into Chicago to take over as executive editor. Carroll Binder (rhymes with kinder), who had run the foreign staff, resigned. Into his job stepped Editor Paul Scott Mowrer. Other able craftsmen remained, among them Lloyd Downs Lewis, managing editor, drama critic and biographer; sage, literary Howard Vincent O'Brien, editorial page columnist; Cartoonists Vaughn Shoemaker and Cecil Jensen, creator of "Colonel McCosmic."

Chance in the Middle. But the local staff was weak. Page One was dull; the editorial page was stodgy. The first Knight ukase on the bulletin board: "Short leads and short sentences. No lead [opening paragraph] is to be more than three typewritten lines, two if possible." Chicago would get frequent samples of Knight's own "personal journalism": punchy editorials in short, snappy sentences. Knight writes a weekly "Publisher's Notebook" for all his papers.*

There was no doubt among Chicago newsmen that Knight had purchased an opportunity; to go down the middle between the New Dealish Times and Sun and the arch-conservative Tribune and Moscow-scared Herald-American. Unbiased news, nonpartisan, liberal editorials were the foundations of Knight success in Akron, Miami, Detroit. There would be plenty of tough competition in Chicago, but Jack Knight has a habit of winning.

* The top three: Philadelphia Bulletin (circ. 662,634), Hearst's New York Journal-American (circ. 641,194), Chicago Herald-American (circ. 471,886). *First "Notebook" in the News was a blast at civilian complacency as illustrated by Elsa Maxwell's Hollywood "Victory Party," pictured in LIFE. Excerpts: "Youthful Judy Garland had everyone in tears when she sang The Last Time I Saw Paris. Of course, Judy has never actually seen Paris, but after a few cocktails, what the hell. . . . Yes, Elsa, it must have been a wonderful party. I am sure you thought it was just too, too divine. I'm afraid it made me retch."

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