The Press: Flynn’s

Having “ransacked the world” for “every aspect of detective literature,” one William J. Flynn presented his compliments to the public on the first page of the first issue of a new magazine, Flynn’s, issued weekly by the Red Star News Co., Manhattan. Onetime Chief of the U. S. Secret Service, Editor Flynn promised to go “far back into the recesses of his own life for thrills and action; those early days in New York when he himself set his feet on the downtown pavements and met the shock of the lawless.” All this and more for ten cents per week. In his ransacking, Editor Flynn had accomplished the seemingly impossible task of discovering “a wholly new writer whose prolific brain can evolve and depict fresh, sparkling detective situations”—a man comparable, in Editor Flynn’s mind, to Poe, Gaboriau, Wilkie Collins, Conan Doyle. This rare being was none other than Richard E. Enright, Police Commissioner of New York City, a man whose “own career demonstrates that men are much like milk—’the cream comes to the top.'” Young and ambitious, Enright began as a railway telegraph operator, became “just a cop” in Manhattan, was “the first and only man in the entire police history of the world” to rise from “the bottom” to his present exalted position. Commissioner-Author Enright’s maiden “thriller,” Vultures of the Dark,” was featured in Flynn’s. The New York World: “To read that ‘Fifth Avenue stretched its lancelike length in mirrored sheen,’ to read of a party that was ‘a modernized version of a Bacchanalian revel with a pseudo-Egyptian setting,’ and of a kiss that was ‘ambrosia, sipped from a rare chalice’ . . . almost any reader might be pardoned for thinking the Commissioner had been an author all his life.”

“Gonegaga”*

In The Forum for October, one George Henry Payne reported a conversation which he had had with a foreigner whom he called “Mr. Gonegaga” : GONEGAGA: “There is Mr. Hearst’s morning American. I understand that thoroughly. The international bankers have taken away all the money from the people and yet—and that is what puzzlesme—the people seem happy. How is that?” PAYNE: “Very simple. The international bankers have not taken absolutely all the money—they have left the plain people a small amount, but enough to buy Mr. Hearst’s three New York papers, his two Chicago papers, his two Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Detroit, Atlanta, Rochester papers, his 16 magazines, and still enough money to go and see his eight expensive historical movies. Why should they not be happy? . . .”

GONEGAGA: “Ah, yes! then The New York Times, which defends the capitalistclass, is really Mr. Brisbane’s favorite paper?”

PAYNE : “Not his favorite paper, but one undoubtedly that he reads religiously. In fact everyone reads the Times.”

GONEGAGA: “Even the Progressives?”

PAYNE : “There wouldn’t be any Progressives if it were not for the Times. They have to read the editorial page to find out all the reactionary things to which they are opposed … the Times, in its news columns, is the only paper that will print what they have to say. . . . The New York World represents the middle class, but it is a little ashamed of it. The Times represents the middle class, but it doesn’t know it. The Times succeeds because it is a great newspaper; the World succeeds because it is a great magazine.”

GONEGAGA: “But doesn’t the World print any news?”

PAYNE : “Oh, yes. When the editors of the World dine out, any confidential communication at the dinner is printed the next day in the front page of the World as news.”

GONEGAGA : “I hear a great deal about Mr. Munsey, but I do not see him.”

PAYNE: “Very few see him. … He is still an exclusive Progressive, he excludes all Progressive views … he comes nearer to being the great Monarchist leader.”

GONEGAGA: “This is new. I did not know. . . .”

PAYNE : “It isn’t so much a political party as it is a dinner party.”

GONEGAGA: “If the Moncharists should ever succeed, whom do you think Mr. Munsey has in mind?”

PAYNE: “I have never grasped what was in Mr. Munsey’s mind, but offhand I should say Frank the First.”

“Largest Piece”

The Literary Digest, because of its gigantic circulation, is compelled to begin its regurgitation of a week’s events and opinions expressed thereon, a good fortnight before the magazine presents its ponderous bulk upon the newsstands. Hence, the Digest is void of “news,” strictly speaking. Here size is a handicap. But size has its compensations. Through its vast organization, the Digest is enabled to manufacture an occasional piece of news so important and exclusive as to warm its creators’ editorial cockles to a high degree.

The last such piece of news manufactured by the Digest was a “straw” ballot of over two million people taken last January on the Mellon plan for tax reduction. In the Digest for Sept. 13, it was announced that another “straw vote”, among 15 million people, had been set in motion to anticipate “the largest piece of news of the year, or of several years,” to wit, the name of the next U. S. President.

The 15 million addresses were alleged to be “more than 50% of the probable voters” in November. A tabulation of their votes was heralded, reasonably enough, as “a true criterion of the public will.” The significance of the tabulation was to be augmented by including a record of the swings and shifts of party allegiance.

On Sept. 20, the Digest announced the first trickle of returns: Coolidge 16,071; LaFollette 5,596; Davis 3,792.

Barber Press

“Shave, sir, or haircut?” “Haircut, please.” “Something to read, sir?” “What have you?” “We have Collier’s, Hearst’s International, The American Magazine, True Romance and All Fiction.” Thus did the advertising agency handling a certain piece of copy for the Lambert Pharmacal Co. of St. Louis imagine the average U. S. barber shop conversation. The agency’s client wanted to advertise its product “Listerine” as a cure for halitosis, had drawn copy aimed at barbers. The copy began: “ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE 5 CENT TIPS. The barber was a good-looking fellow— one of the best in the shop. . . .” Last week, the five magazines above mentioned put out their issues, each containing this advertisement. No other magazine contained it. An observing public knew well what constituted the U. S. barber shop press.

“Books”

To keep up with the encyclopedic tendency of modern journalism, the New York Herald-Tribune, last week, added a fat section to its Sunday edition, entitled BOOKS, A Weekly Re-view of Contemporary Literature, edited by Stuart P. Sherman. Other occupants of the journalistic-literary field in Manhattan are: The New York Times, whose Book Review of a Sunday is labelled “Section 3′ and comprises 32 handsomely rotogravured pages of reviews and comment; and the Evening Post, whereof the Saturdayliterary supplement, once edited by Henry Seidel Canby, became somewhat more informal in tone and appearance after the Post was taken over by Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis.

The initial number of the Herald-Tribune’s new appendage, 24 pages in length, much resembled the Post’s supplement in physical appearance, bearing a sketch of Joseph Hergesheimer on its first page betwixt a statement of policy by Editor Sherman and a review of Hergesheimer’s Balisand by Carl Van Doren. Its temper struck the reader as being pitched somewhere between the grand manner of the Times and the familiarity of the Post.

*Gaga is slang for “stupefied.”