Missing Link

To the surprise of the staff, the biggest news at Hearst's Chicago American last week broke on its city-room bulletin board: the American, with an afternoon circulation of 524,823 and a Sunday edition of 706,407, had been sold to the Chicago Tribune. The Trib announced that the American would go on publishing with its present management. Reported price: about $12 million, which newsmen called "fantastically high."

The deal made Chicago a missing link in the Hearst chain, which started the American in 1900 and once had two dailies publishing there at the same time. But the paper has been losing heavily, and from its sale, Editor in Chief William Randolph Hearst Jr. will be able to give his papers in New York, San Francisco. Boston and Baltimore new presses and production equipment that his modernization program has already brought to the remaining eleven Hearst papers. Chicago sat back to watch how the Trib meant to put the American into the black.

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