Press: Morning Monopoly

This week Toronto joined the list of major cities in which there is but one morning daily newspaper.* Last month, the 92-year-old morning Globe, property of the rich and religious Jaffray family was sold for a reported $500,000 to two extraordinary characters: wealthy oldWilliam Henry Wright, mining promoter who went to War as a “millionaire private,” and his financial adviser, a 31-year-old ex-stockbroker named C. George McCullagh.

Pious Publisher William Gladstone Jaffray had permitted no racing news, movie gossip or tobacco advertising to get into his paper, gave his readers a weekly Wednesday sermon instead. First thing the new owners did was to print all the tobacco copy their space salesmen could grab, run many a racing tip and track result. Said candid Purchaser Wright: “I will still be more interested in the Racing Form and the Breeding Journal than the ordinary daily newspapers.”

Last week the 78,000 readers of the Globe had a further surprise when they were told that the Globe had bought its morning opposition, the Mail & Empire, would henceforth issue both in combination as the Globe &Mail. Publisher McCullagh announced that the “best features” of each paper would be retained, went on to say that so far as it might be “compatible with good businesspractice and efficiency,” the Mail & Empire staff would get work on the Globe & Mail.

The Mail & Empire dated from 1872, when the Mail was founded. It absorbed the Empire in 1895. In 1927 the paper was bought by a moody Montreal financier named Izaak Walton Killam, an enthusiastic fisherman like his father before him. Once at a tea party Mr. Killam is said to have remained silent for an hour, then wistfully remarked, “My God, I need a million dollars.” Last week when negotiations were started with the Globe interests, Mr. Killam held out for five days. When the higgling & haggling was finished, Fisherman Killam had not one million dollars but $2,500,000.

*Some others are Minneapolis, whose morning Tribune has monopolized its field since 1867; Dallas, where the News has had a morning monopoly since 1885; Cleveland, whose Plain Dealer has been unopposed since 1927: St. Louis, which has had only the fatGlobe-Democrat in the morning since 1919; Baltimore, whose morning Sun has shone unshadowed since 1928; Louisville, exclusive morning field of the Courier-Journal since 1927; Kansas City, where the Times (morning edition of the Star) has had clear sailing since 1928; and Cincinnati, whose Enquirer has been in sole possession of the morning field since 1930.