Experiment's End

You could have heard a pica drop in the third-floor city room of Manhattan's shrill PM. Said the mimeographed announcement: Editor-Founder Ralph McAllister Ingersoll was out, advertisements were in.

Neither was a great surprise. In its 6 1/2 years the Great Adless Experiment had cost Publisher Marshall Field III more than $4 million. Ingersoll's plaintive plea last June for 100,000 more readers had been generally regarded as a last-gasp try for profits on circulation alone. But circulation last week was just 170,755--only 5,000 more than when Ingersoll cried for help, and nowhere near enough.

Now Angel Field had had enough. Said he: "I cannot justify to myself . . . the continuous meeting of the deficits." If advertising would sully PM's soul, as Editor Ingersoll believed, then PM would have to be sullied. Said Ingersoll: "I have no choice but to resign."

PM's new editor is John Philip Lewis, 43, a hardworking, shirt-sleeved newsman. He has been with PM since it was born, as managing editor quieted its shrillness and briefly got its nose above water while Ingersoll was away at war.

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