Ban Broken

At Hong Kong's Kai Tak airport the day before Christmas, a bundled-up Negro stepped off a night plane from Tokyo, drove to Kowloon railroad station and boarded a train for the 22-mile trip to Lo Wu on the China border. There, in defiance of the State Department's refusal to give U.S. newsmen passports to Red China (TIME, Sept. 3), William Worthy Jr., 36, special correspondent for Baltimore's Negro semiweekly Afro-American, crossed the border, became the first American reporter to enter China in seven years.

In Peking two days later, a plane from Moscow landed with two other U.S. newsmen: Phil Harrington,* 36, a Look magazine photographer, and Edmund Stevens, 46, Look's Moscow correspondent, who told colleagues in Russia that he was going on "a skiing story." At week's end Bill Worthy also arrived in Peking, made the first broadcast from China by a U.S. reporter since 1949. Though he had little news to report, Worthy's broadcast was monitored by CBS and rebroadcast.

Unreasonable Ban. Bill Worthy is a hard-working foreign correspondent who covered Korea, the Bandung Conference, and other major events on assignment from Afro-American, which pays part of his expenses and allows him to sell stories to other publications. He has also worked as a free-lance correspondent for CBS, which in August 1955 carried his short-wave radio newscast from Moscow, the first permitted a U.S. newsman since 1947. Worthy tried to persuade CBS to underwrite his trip to China, but the network, wary of stirring up trouble in Washington, refused. However, CBS said it will continue to pick up Worthy's broadcasts, pay him when he returns; he is due back Jan. 20 to resume studying on a Nieman fellowship at Harvard.

Editors, who have been hoping to send reporters into China since the Communists first offered to admit U.S. newsmen last August, hailed the correspondents' arrival in Peking as a Worthy cause. While they have grudgingly gone along with the State Department's ban, they see little point in its contention that lifting the ban would prejudice attempts to free U.S. prisoners held by the Chinese. Newsmen also brush aside the State Department's argument that reporters in China might be held as hostages. They are willing to waive any potential claim against the U.S. Government--as Bill Worthy did--in the event that the Communists jail them.

Passports Revoked. At week's end the State Department revoked the passports of Worthy, Stevens and Harrington; they will be valid only for their return to the U.S. The Treasury Department also threatened to block the correspondents' bank accounts for violating the 1950 law forbidding financial dealings with Communist China. The Government did not, however, say that it would take action against the Afro-American or Look, or permanently cancel the newsmen's passports. Nor did it threaten to impose the maximum penalty for violating passport restrictions: $2,000 fine and five years in prison. It was apparent that the State Department, though anxious to discourage other China-minded newsmen, was not eager to start a war with the U.S. press on its right to gather news.

Return Engagement

In 1954, when Matthew McCloskey, millionaire contractor and Democratic Party treasurer, took over Philadelphia's tabloid Daily News, the paper was understaffed, unreadable and unprofitable. McCloskey boosted the editorial staff from 28 to 118, slicked up the paper's format, spent $1,250,000 for new presses, and changed the longtime Republican News into a Democratic sheet. But he could not change the red into black ink. Last week, losing $50,000 a week, McCloskey told the American Newspaper Guild he would close the News in 24 hours unless the Guild consented to a payroll cut of 50%. The Guild hastily agreed to cooperate with McCloskey's "reorganizational program designed to insure continued publication." McCloskey immediately fired 21 employees, said that more dismissals were to come.

McCloskey's program was to withdraw as publisher of the News (but stay on as board chairman), turn over management to David ("Tommy") Stern III, 47, Philadelphia-born publisher of the profitable New Orleans Item. Stern is a bustling Harvardman who worked his way up on his father's papers, the Camden (N.J.) Courier and Post and the now-defunct Philadelphia Record, wrote both the novel and the movie Francis, about a talking mule, and bought the Item in 1949 after his father sold the papers.

McCloskey had announced a fortnight ago that Stern would take over as publisher. But Stern apparently balked at the top-heavy payroll, told McCloskey the Guild would have to give him a free hand to fire before he would move in. As publisher of the evening News, his main task will be to cut costs and boost advertising (which is scanty compared with the competing Bulletin and morning Inquirer), keep circulation climbing above its present peak of 201,850--less than one-third of Bulletin or Inquirer circulation. While he has no formal agreement to buy the paper, friends have little doubt that Stern will do so if he can make it pay.

Death in the Small Towns

Born in 1953 out of the old fortnightly Pathfinder newsmagazine, Town Journal grew fast. Circulation of the folksy monthly aimed at small-town readers rose to 2,006,686, and ad sales to $3,000,000. Nevertheless, the magazine did not grow fast enough to keep up with rising costs. Last week Farm Journal Inc., owners of Town Journal, decided to fold Town Journal with the February issue.

Town Journal was losing more than $1,000,000 a year, a heavy loss even for rich Farm Journal (circ. 3,623,554). Said Farm Journal Inc. President Richard J. Babcock: "It is almost impossible to start a new magazine today," because it must wait six or eight years before it can attract enough advertisers to break even. He calculated that Town Journal would need three more years of heavy investment, figured it was not worth risking.

* Whose name was persistently misspelled "Hollington" by wire services. Explanation: the British correspondent for Reuters in Peking who first reported the Look team's arrival heard their names from a Chinese official.

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