Transcontinental Times

One morning last week 45 bigwig Southern Californians got a morning newspaper by special messenger. Each copy was gift-wrapped in cellophane, delivered free with the publisher's compliments. The paper was the New York Times, which had left New York at 12:30 that morning, and the stunt was the latest step in Publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger's campaign to make the best U.S. daily a truly national newspaper. The first day's shipment to Los Angeles newsstands (150 copies) sold out by noon; next day the New York Herald Tribune, anxious not to be outpromoted, followed suit.

To the local morning papers, Hearst's Examiner and the Los Angeles Times, the invasion posed no grave threat. But readers who were prepared to pay the steep prices (25-c- a day, 50-c- Sundays, $8.50 a month) could now get "All the News That's Fit to Print" on the day when it was news. Next move planned by the Times, which flies 12,000 copies a day to 28 Eastern and Midwestern U.S. cities: air delivery all along the West Coast, and possibly home delivery.

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