The Biggest News

Merlyn S. Pitzele (rhymes with ritzily), labor editor of Business Week, has insomnia. To while away the sleepless hours one night last winter, he wondered about the one headline that U.S. newspaper editors would most like to print. In the morning, he wrote to 69 newspapers from New York to Los Angeles.

Last week Argosy magazine spread 40 of the 51 replies across four pages, topping them with mastheads and dressing them in the familiar headline styles of the newspapers. The answers were an interesting commentary on what was on the U.S. mind--or, at least, on the minds of its editors. By far the majority--four out of five--wanted most of all to see an end to war, hot or cold. There were no headlines dealing with such big day-by-day space-fillers as domestic politics and sport. Only one out of ten editors thought the biggest news would come in religion, science or both. And only one, in local-news-playing Boston (TIME, April 10), kept his local blinders on. The headlines:

The Boston Post:

MILLION-DOLLAR BANDITS CAUGHT

The Youngstown, Ohio, Vindicator:

CHRIST RETURNS TO EARTH

The Chicago Daily News:

CANCER CURE IS FOUND

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

SCIENCE PROVES LIFE AFTER DEATH

The Houston Press:

ANTI-RED REVOLT SWEEPS MOSCOW, STALIN, TOP AIDES SLAIN

The Christian Science Monitor:

U.S. AND RUSSIA REACH ACCORD; ATOMIC POWER HARNESSED TO PEACE

The Los Angeles Times:

ATOM BOMB OUTLAWED; NATIONS OF WORLD BAN WAR IN ANY FORM

Argosy also set up as a headline the reply from the Chicago Tribune'?, Publisher Bertie McCormick, who prides himself on bossing the "world's greatest newspaper." Said McCormick:

SORRY, HAVEN'T ONE TO SUGGEST.

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