The Press: Uphill Climb

After the Los Angeles Times’s publisher Norman Chandler launched the Los Angeles Mirror in 1948, he made a frank confession: “I’m no miracle man. Every newspaperman knows it takes three to five years to pull a new paper out of the red.” He was optimistic. At the start, the Mirror, only new U.S. metropolitan daily since war’s end. was also a strange-looking infant. Its tabloid Page One was printed sideways, so that it looked just like a full-size daily until readers took it off the newsstand and opened it up. Few readers bothered; from its first press run of 500,000 copies, its sales plummeted to only 72,000 readers a day.

The Mirror’s publisher, Virgil M. Pink-ley, ex-U.P. general manager for Europe, knew what to do about that. He turned its front page around and set out aggressively to give the Mirror a crisp, sensational style (“All news stories are written too long, including those in the Mirror”). Los Angeles, said Pinkley, “needs a fighting newspaper [and] the Mirror is anyone’s fist in a good fight.” The paper picked its fights carefully, more often to woo new readers than for any lofty civic motives. Mirrormen breezily campaigned against everything from “black-market baby rackets” and Southern California’s “Saloon Empire” to ugly female legs.

“Sizzling & Sensational.” One of the Mirror’s fiercest battles was against its two afternoon competitors, Hearst’s Herald & Express and the ailing Daily News. In editorials and news stories, all three papers constantly fire away (TIME, Nov. 24, 1952 et seq.) at one another. For example, in the middle of the Mirror’s liquor-license series, Newsmen discovered that Mirror Movie Columnist Florabel Muir had herself sold a license in just the way Mirror had said was “sizzling and sensational.” Columnist Muir promptly resigned (TIME, Oct. 19).

The Mirror had another enemy: the city itself. In sprawling Los Angeles, which covers 452 square miles, distribution costs are high, and they keep rising, along with spiraling production costs. Slowly, however, the Mirror began to win the battle.

Its circulation climbed steadily to its present high of 224,438. During the same period, circulation of all the other papers except the Times dropped sharply. To take readers away from its competitors, Owner Chandler has poured millions into the Mirror. Despite this rapid growth, starting a new daily is such an expensive, uphill struggle that, even after five years, the Mirror has still not moved out of the red.

Full Size. Last week the Mirror got ready for another big step to try to make its own way. Publisher Pinkley announced that beginning next month the Mirror will change its format again, this time into a full-size, eight-column paper like its morning sister, the Times. Pinkley said the change was the result of a poll which showed that its readers, 6-to-1, preferred an eight-column paper. “Besides,” added Pinkley, “Los Angeles just isn’t a tabloid town. Tabloids thrive where two things exist: dense population and good public transportation; Los Angeles has neither.”

But Los Angeles newsmen pointed to another reason: advertisers preferred to load the Times with full-size ads instead of placing them in the tabloid-size Mirror. The change would give the Mirror a chance at some of this revenue. “When we make the changeover,” says Owner Chandler, “we anticipate our losses will be cut from between $6,000 to $8,000 a week.” Publisher Pinkley hopes that the new full-size Mirror will hit the 300,-ooo reader mark. Says he: “I doubt that any metropolitan newspaper can make money with less than a 300,000 to 325,-ooo circulation.”