The Press: Scooper Scooped

Publisher William Randolph Hearst advanced $200,000 to finance the Graf Zeppelin’s globe-trot. In return, correspondents for his newspapers and his alone (in the U. S.)were carried on the flight. When Commander Dr. Hugo Eckener steamed up New York Harbor last fortnight on an official welcoming tug after getting back to Lakehurst, eager Hearst photographers snapped him and snapped him; eager Hearst editors spread the photographs on flaring Hearst pages in the grand finale of Publisher Hearst’s world “scoop” of the flight.

Last week, the New York Telegram reprinted the photographs of Dr. Eckener on the triumphal tugboat, as a Telegram advertisement. What the Hearst editors had evidently not noticed, what the Telegram had either managed or discovered with journalistic glee, was that Dr. Eckener soon after his return to Lakehurst (“Lake-hearst”), had clenched in his hand a Manhattan newspaper, the name of which was clearly distinguishable in the photographs. Cried the Telegram advertisement: “Note Dr. Eckener’s newspaper—The New York Telegram.”

Capper Capped

The great political friend of Kansas farmers is slim, grey-haired Senator Arthur Capper. This friendship he cultivates through Capper Publications, including the Topeka Daily Capital, third largest newspaper in Kansas (circulation 42.915)*, and Capper’s Weekly, mighty farmpaper (circulation 369,120). Last week The Capital celebrated its 50th anniversary with a monster Golden Jubilee edition containing 164 pages, about 250,000 words.

Among the 250,000, the words “Kansas” and “Capper” ever recurred. Besides the customary news features were six special sections praising the State and its Publisher-Senator. Hymned were Kansas business, buildings, sports, nonagenarians, airlife, roads, history, brass bands, debutantes, geology, wild animals. Described were the Capper publishing plant, genealogy, policies, hopes.

Unlike that more ebullient, cosmopolitan journalist, William Allen White of the Emporia Gazette, Publisher-Senator Capper confines his interest to Kansas. Last week he editorialized: “I pledge for myself and The Capital at least another half-century’s wholehearted devotion to the task of making Topeka a greater and better city; Kansas a more prosperous and happier State.”

Creager v. Collier’s

“The Red-Headed Rooster of the Rio Grande” lately crowed a loud, defiant crow. Last week lawyers in Manhattan and Brownsville, Tex., made ready to dispute the pros and cons of his crowing.

The Rooster is Rentfro Banton Creager, red-haired Brownsville bank president, Republican National Committeeman and Texas boss, onetime gubernatorial nominee, good friend of Presidents Harding and Coolidge, both of whom offered him the U. S. Ambassadorship to Mexico. In every way “Rooster” Creager looms large in Texas. When he read references to himself which he considered defamatory in Collier’s magazine, he was not one to blench. Promptly he filed libel suits against Cottier’s aggregating $1,000,000.

The tale concerns Hidalgo County in far southeastern Texas. Twenty years ago Hidalgo was flat, hot, empty, covered with mesquite, stalked by lonely, dusty greasers. Today Hidalgo is a shining, fertile land, starred with endless constellations of grapefruit, melons and other juici-nesses—a lustrous feat of irrigation. Its crop is estimated at 4,500 carloads per year. Hidalgo homes are prosperous. Yancy Baker, onetime roughriding Hidalgo sheriff, now Democratic boss, lives in an enormous red and yellow showr place. Hidalgo people smile in the sun. Hidalgo ripens like its fruits. It has been irrigated financially through troughs of clever politics.

Last spring soft-spoken Editor William Ludlow Chenery of Collier’s pondered Hidalgo’s startling growth. Soon he despatched Writer Owen P. White, oldtime Texan, to be Hidalgo’s historian. Writer White was amazed at many things he saw just above the Rio Grande. Among them, naturally, was “Rooster” Creager who,with Boss Baker, seemed to rule the Hidalgo roost. In his subsequent history, Writer White said: “It’s right there [Hidalgo County] . . . that our two most stylish American breakfast foods, GRAFT and GRAPEFRUIT . . . have been brought to their very highest and juiciest state of perfection. . . . R. B. Creager . . . for reasons best known to himself, has always encouraged the DEFEAT of his own party in Hidalgo county. . . Will the Texas Tammany boys, supported by the illiterate, non-taxpaying Mexican voters, and their loyal Republican friend, Hon. R. B. Creager, be able to hold their jobs and thus continue to dictate the destiny of a huge and ever-increasing tax roll?

Said Writer White: “The Texas Tammany boys not only tell the taxpayers to go to hell, but, out of the goodness of their hearts, provide them with a handy route in the shape of a heavily bonded high-way and a costly toll bridge which lands them right at the very door of the place. A committee of Congressmen went to Hidalgo County and studied the technique of Baker, Creager & Co., when they were ready to remark: ‘Well, this is all too fancy for us. Philadelphia at its best was never like this.’ ”

Writer White might have been enough to stir “Rooster” Creager. But preceding his article (June 22) was another (June 15) by William G. Shepherd, apropos of Senator Brookhart’s committee investigation of political graft. Again the name of Creager appeared. Said Writer Shepherd: “Many citizens of Texas who are lucky enough to have been named by Republican Washington for Federal jobs in Texas . . . have gone through the very realistic ceremony of actually signing notes carrying Mr. Creager’s name. . . . Collecting Republican money in Texas is high-pressure business; Creager has a $10,000-a-year assistant.”

Before two such philippics the “Rooster” could not keep the peace. He flew to numerous attorneys. When the Brownsville court session opens in December, he hopes to prove that Collier’s libeled him by implying that: 1) He sold Federal offices for personal profit. 2) He switched votes. 3) He escaped jail through control of the courts. 4) He connived with the Democratic party to defeat the Republicans, etc. etc.

Meanwhile Collier’s prepares to defend itself as truth-telling, to justify a position succinctly expressed by Writer White: “Take a look at the map of Texas; put your finger down on its far southeast corner; jerk it away quickly before you get a blister. . . .” The case of Creager v. Collier’s promises to be a long warm footnote to the histories of Texas politics and U. S. publishing.

New Tabloids

Two new tabloid newspapers roiled off the presses last week.

Chicago received its first tabloid, the long-heralded Daily Illustrated Times, an astonishingly exact replica of Manhattan’s Daily News, first U. S. tabloid now fat with profits from the largest U. S. daily circulation (1,300,000). The spectacle was thus offered of shrewd Publisher Samuel Emory Thomason adopting the conception of fellow townsmen and publishers and flaunting it in their faces. For, as everyone knows, enterprising Publishers Joseph Medill Patterson and Robert Rutherford McCormick (Chicago Daily Tribune’) devised Manhattan’s Daily News.

The Daily Illustrated Times, only 2¢ Chicago afternoon paper, will rival the Evening American, Evening Post, Daily News. Disclaiming political affiliations, advocating civic uplift, it declared it would be “a paper for folks.” Estimated first day’s sale: 250,000 — probably a record.

Manhattan’s new tabloid, Today in New York, is new in theory as well as fact. Its specialized function is to tell What You Can See and What You Can Do Today in New York. Forecast each morning for the ensuing day are ship arrivals, theatres, sports, airlife, celebra tions, shops, sights, food, finance, etc., etc.

Designed to appeal to transients, its sponsors sell it to hotels, clubs, railroads, steamship lines, for free delivery to patrons. Circulation so far: 5,000.

Behind Today in New York are potent men, including Banker Frederick Warburg and Book Publisher George Palmer Putnam; president is Paul Raymer, able young advertising man, Cornell alumnus (1920).

* The Wichita Beacon: 47,207; Wichita Eagle, 57,630.