Such a Coverage!

In the London Daily Express office during the war, Editor Arthur Christiansen used to notice a lackadaisical G.I. in a typical G.I. pose--leaning against the wall of the sub-editors' room and blankly chewing gum. One day Christiansen struck up a conversation with the leaner, found that he was soaking up the newspaper atmosphere for future use. His name: Sergeant Richard Vesey.

Not long ago, Dick, back home and demobilized, learned that Chris was coming to the U.S. He wrote him a friendly challenge: "Don't just visit New York and Washington, like most visitors. Come on out here and see the real U.S." Like most visitors, Arthur Christiansen went to New York and Washington--and to Hollywood, where the cocktail parties were "regal, magnificent." But last week the editor of the world's largest daily newspaper (circ. 3,856,375) paid a visit to his friend Dick Vesey, now a University of Wisconsin journalism student, at his home town of Plymouth, Wis. (pop. 5,000).

With Vesey as a guide, Chris and his blonde wife Brenda strolled along Plymouth's Mill Street. They talked shop with the editor of the weekly Plymouth Review (circ. 2,100), visited a cheese factory, munched Schwaller's hamburgers ("biggest in Wisconsin"). Sighed Chris: "It's wonderful!" Editor Christiansen, a gregarious man with a florid cherub's face and a mockingbird's sense of humor, felt as much at home in Plymouth as he does back home in Holland-on-Sea.

Godlike Voice. Christiansen gets along with people. His journalist's creed is simply: "People, people, people!" This formula, plus his enormous energy, made him editor of Lord Beaverbrook's flamboyant Express at 29. In his first year, 1933, he raised the circulation 160,000, made the Express the world's biggest daily. And he has kept it there ever since. Into a four-page paper, Christiansen and his editors pack as many as 70 brisk, brief, breezy news stories, as well as pictures and features. They highlight them with tricky typography (when the "Ink Spots" quartet visited London recently, the headline was four ink blots).

The staff of the Daily Express is the best paid in Fleet Street, and Christiansen says it has the hardest-working editor. He gets up at 8:30, reads the papers until 10, then makes for the bathroom. There he reads and shaves at the same time.

At a pre-luncheon conference with his editors, he talks over the news. After lunch, he criticizes stories, confers with the night staff, often rewrites the editorials. Says he: "We never waste space saying 'On the one hand.' . . . We just state an opinion in a godlike voice."

Common Touch. But it is by his alternately nagging and praising daily bulletins that Christiansen puts his mark on the Ex-Press. Excerpts: "Such a coverage! Such splendour! Such magnificence! From Newell Rogers in Washington to Ralph Campion in Cock Fosters the heart of this paper beats strongly. . . . [But] it hurts when we miss the news.. . . The headline WIFE SITS ON TAIL OF PLANE in the Daily Mail is a better headline than [our] HOLIDAY PLANE IN SEA. . . . Why does the phrase The British taxpayer must foot the bill' appear? . . . Why not 'The taxpayer pays?' The phrase is absurd and should not be used. . . ."

Like the masses who buy his paper, Christiansen enjoys soccer matches, boxing and dog racing. He berates his Fleet Street friends for their lack of the common touch. Says he: "You don't like these people, do you? You're out of touch with the common people." But in politics Christiansen walks the Beaverbrook line. The Express attacks the Labor Government and considers the American loan a disastrous mistake. (Prodding mercilessly away in the background is the wily, exacting Beaver. Says he: "So you want to know what makes Sammy [Christiansen] run, eh? Well, I do.") One reader whose political views Christiansen has never swayed is his aged father, a retired shipwright. When Editor Percy Cudlipp of the Socialist Daily Herald visited the Christiansens, the old man drew Cudlipp aside and whispered: "I'm on your side, you know. I don't hold with his politics."

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