Ruppel Rumpus

Chicago's newspaper war last week was more than a breakfast-table brawl between the Sun and the Tribune. The Windy City's evening papers, freshly filled with new and noisy talent, were also blowing fit to crack their cheeks. A cyclonic Marine captain named Lou Ruppel had taken over Hearst's rowdy Herald-American, and storm signals were out all over town.

Lou Ruppel, 41, is a stocky, 6-ft. hellraiser, raised in Brooklyn and adept at hurling four-letter words out of either side of his mouth. He went ashore with the Marines at Kwajalein, has since been relieved from active duty. His three-word journalistic credo is: "Lots of sock." He took over as $40,000-a-year executive editor two months ago. At first the rumbles were confined to the Herald-American building, where he was engaged in shaking up his staff. Then he got out on the street, in trick headlines. Sample Ruppel banner when the Allies retook a German town: THINGS LOOK BETTER Now.

One day last week he all but shoved the war off Page One with a wild, slugging, chaotic diatribe labeled DIRTY SHIRT TOWN. It was Ruppel in bare knuckles.

He socked at Mayor Ed Kelly, Governor Dwight Green, lawyers and bankers and traction interests, politicians, the plain citizenry ("suckers . . ."). General theme: Chicago is a shoddy place to live, because of cupidity, stupidity, boondoggling and apathy. All this was not so much an expose as a loud public belch, well illustrated. In stories signed by "William Tell," the public was invited to join in with its own complaints. Said the Herald-American: "Tell William . . . and let William Tell."

Rough, Tough. Chicago has seen Ruppel's brand of slambang journalism before. Between 1935 and 1938 he doubled the circulation of the tabloid Times by such arresting noises. (In fact, his latest outburst was a tried-&-true Ruppel trick: a Times headline once blazoned: CHICAGO HAS A DIRTY NECK.) In his Times days, Ruppel got a hospital-bed picture by disguising photographers as clergymen, used a siren-screaming ambulance to rush World Series photographs to the engravers.

In circulation, the "Herald-American (with 500,000 plus) already ranks first among Chicago evening papers. Ruppel's competitors include his old paper, the Times, and the sane and sturdy Daily News, now undergoing a freshening of its own under able new management (TIME, Oct. 30). With Ruppel back, the Times and News bravely set themselves for a revival of the eye-gouging Front Page journalism that made Chicago newspapers famed for blatancy--and readability.

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