The Press: Death at Canton

Than the morning News of Canton, Ohio has had few newspapers of wider fame. In 1926 it became a national figure when its editor, Don R. Mellett, was assassinated for his crusade against an alliance of the police and the underworld in Canton, (TIME, July 26; Aug. 2, 1926). In 1927 that crusade was posthumously rewarded with the Pulitzer prize. Yet the News did not pay. Its owner, James M. Cox, Ohio’s ofttime (1913-15, 1917-19, 1919-21) Governor and the Democratic Presidential nominee of 1920, had bought it as a rundown property from Henry Holiday Timken (roller bearings). Still financially run down was it last week when Publisher Cox, who makes money with his Miami News, Springfield News, Dayton News and Springfield Sun, sold it to Brush-Moore Newspapers Inc., the Ohio chain which publishes the Canton Repository (evening). Brush-Moore did to the News what chain-publishers usually do to unprofitable papers, no matter what their fame—killed it.