The Press: Bulldog’s Tail

Once there was a Tribune in Chicago. Sturdy bulldog of newspapers, with bandy legs and a coarse voice, it glared at rivals, referred to itself as “the World’s Greatest Newspaper.” Robert R. McCormick and Joseph Medill Patterson were its keepers, co-editors and publishers.

In 1918 the Tribune piled up more profits than ever in its highly prosperous career. Captain Patterson, taking a hint from Lord Northcliffe (“New York’s simply begging for a picture newspaper”), decided that the bulldog needed a tail. He started the New York Daily News, gum-chewer’s sheetlet, which began to wag at a great rate. In three years its circulation was 400,000. “When it reaches a million,” said Mr. Patterson, “I shall go to New York for good.”

Meanwhile Publisher McCormick had put a collar on the bulldog in the form of Liberty, a brass-studded fiction journal, designed to attract readers who might otherwise spend their five cents on the Saturday Evening Post. New paper-mills were bought to serve the News and Liberty. The old bulldog had grown.

There is still a Tribune in Chicago. Last week it published an announcement: “Mr. Patterson will establish his headquarters in New York to administer the affairs of the News and Liberty. Colonel McCormick will stay in Chicago and manage the Tribune and the paper mills.” Where two men had stood together to manage one paper, they must stand apart to manage three. And the deduction? “The bulldog’s tail,” said reasoners, “is making a million wags a day.”