The Press: Chicago Tabloid

Having learned three weeks ago that Samuel Emory Thomason’s Chicago Journal had been purchased by Walter Ansel Strong’s Daily News, news-prophets set about to predict that the Journal would be turned into a tabloid (TIME, Aug. 12). Paying little attention to Strong denials, persistent Hearst-Colyumist Arthur Brisbane put one ear to the ground and wrote: “The Chicago Journal, giving a partial imitation of Alice’s Cheshire Cat, will shrink from John Eastman’s full size to a tabloid.* The Chicago Daily News, promoting this metamorphosis, should read La Fontaine’s fable of the Woodman that warmed the snake in his bosom. The Chicago version of that fable tells you What that snake did to the Woodman is NOBODY’S business!”!

Last week, without “shrinking,” the Journal was officially folded into the Daily News and made a part of it. Henceforth subscribers of the two newspapers will be served by one full-sized daily, The Chicago Daily News and Chicago Daily Journal. The facts behind the tabloid rumor proved to be as follows: Publisher Thomason of the defunct Journal, retaining those members of his staff who were not taken over to the Daily News in the consolidation, will issue soon an afternoon tabloid newspaper, known as the Daily Times. Copiously illustrated, wholly independent of the Daily News & Journal, it will be served by Associated Press wire service, to retain which franchise Publisher Thomason has been issuing a makeshift Daily Commercial Chronicle in the interim.

—Mr. Brisbane’s memory is not always perfect. It was Alice herself who changed size, when she nibbled pieces of the Caterpillar’s mushroom. The Cheshire Cat, constant in size, faded in and out of sight. tin this fable, the frozen snake came to, bit the Woodman.