The Mighty Middleweights

When a crowded passenger train jumped the tracks and crashed in Medford, Mass, one morning last week, the Quincy Patriot Ledger had to race twelve miles farther for the story than the dailies in nearby Boston. Nonetheless, the alert evening Ledger (slogan: "Cover the World and Don't Forget the South Shore") had its expert wrap-up of the story (EXPRESS TRAIN WRECKED ON BRIDGE IN MEDFORD; 2 KILLED, MANY INJURED) in readers' hands long before metropolitan papers got to the South Shore with the story.

The feat was routine for the Patriot Ledger (circ. 44,349), which has its own U.N. correspondent, staffed the Olympic Games in Australia, and sent its own reporter to cover the 1955 summit meeting in Geneva. But the fast footwork of Editor John R. Herbert and staff also typified the vitality of middle-sized dailies across the nation in a David-Goliath competitive struggle that is fast transforming the U.S. press.

In a historic shift of newspaper influence that has paced the human exodus from big cities, the middle-sized dailies (very roughly speaking, with circulations of 20,000 to 75,000) in smaller cities and suburbs since World War II have passed the metropolitan press with the biggest circulation upsurge in their history. While big-city papers' share of the reader market has actually slipped (from 39% to 37%) since 1953, middle-sized dailies today account for 39% of all the 57 million daily papers sold in the U.S.--and they are forging ahead at a steady 1% a year. They have also been hit less hard by spiraling costs than their metropolitan competitors. Most middle-tier dailies net between 8% and 12% a year, v. 3% to 5% for the prosperous big-city papers--and few of the big-city papers are truly prosperous. They also compete less fiercely for advertising than most metropolitan dailies, which not only charge lower line rates but must pay far more to boost out-of-city circulation. Says a Chicago metropolitan newspaper executive: "Anybody who's looking for a newspaper with a future ought to look in the middle-sized cities. Most big papers today are nothing but big trouble."

Mrs. Murphy's Outhouse. From Southern California's sprawling super-metropolis to the exurbs of New Jersey and Long Island, the middleweights give readers a commodity that increasingly defies the resources of the big-city daily: intensive home-town coverage plus an increasingly sophisticated coverage of world affairs. Now a giant among examples of the trend, Alicia Patterson's broadly curious, ad-fat Newsday (TIME. Sept. 13, 1954) has scooped 268,626 Long Island readers right out of the pants pockets of New York City's seven major dailies since 1940. Under the guns of Los Angeles' four dailies, 30 suburban and small-town papers share more than 700,000 circulation; in West Covina. only 20 miles from the Los Angeles Times building, the three-year-old San Gabriel Valley Tribune (circ. 30,195) last week published a paper of 78 pages--only two pages smaller than the mighty Times --and crammed with news of the six communities it serves. Says the editor of a prospering middle-sized Illinois daily: "The Chicago Tribune and the Detroit Free Press come into our towns like a ton of bricks. But we cover the local news like a tent over a dime. For us. the biggest news in the world is that Mrs. Murphy painted her outhouse red this morning."

Where small-town papers once focused exclusively on Mrs. Murphy, the multiplying middleweights have built circulation with the worldwide coverage for which readers formerly turned to metropolitan dailies. Many newspapers are prospering in spite of almost irresponsible mediocrity. But in a comparative survey last week, TIME correspondents across the U.S. found that in a majority of cases top national and international stories got substantially the same play in big cities and small. The middle-tier papers have also been quick to seize on such technological advances as color printing, tele-typesetters and cheap, fast methods that enable them to use as heavy photo coverage as most city dailies.

Nibbled to Death. Many fast-growing papers, such as California's San Bernadino Sun and Telegram (combined circ. 58,076), which cover the biggest county in the U.S.. fence metropolitan competitors with networks of string correspondents, special editions for local communities, one of the city-slick Sunday magazines. Says the publisher of a small-city Midwestern chain: "You have to be the plus paper." Through such tactics, Michigan's middlesized dailies have pared more than 100,000 Sunday circulation from Hearst's Detroit Times. Laments a metropolitan newspaper executive in Atlanta: "We're being nibbled to death by small ducks."

Most metropolitan newspapers have reacted vigorously to regional nibbling. Far-roving dailies such as the Denver Post and the Portland Oregonian hold down huge territories with bureaus and stringers. The Detroit Free Press, which publishes five out-of-city editions a day for readers in a 150-mile radius, boasts in one editor's words, that it "will go in and take on a local story that the local daily won't handle.'' But such hands-off stories are becoming increasingly hard to find. As Oregon Editor Alton Baker Jr. says: "Readers want us to stick our necks out." Though, in their own home towns, the great majority of all U.S. newspapers today have a morning or evening monopoly, there has never been less room for monopoly mentality. The paper from the next city is often knocking at the door.

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