The Press: Marshall Field at Work

—PM, the experimental New York tabloid which has never accepted a line of paid advertising in its three-year life, is seriously considering accepting ads.

—The Chicago Sun, PM’s stuffy younger sister, has begun to insert reader-pulling divorce and crime news.

—Marshall Field III, owner of both papers and the Sun’s editor, on his soth birthday (Sept. 28) gets the final installment of his grandfather’s fortune(TIME, Sept. 20), an inheritance consisting mainly of real estate and valuedat about $75,000,000.

Under the terms of his grandfather’s lawyer-proof, 23-part will he had already received some $93,000,000 in driblets at 25, 30, 35) 40 and 45.Now, in full and sole control, he can arrange his affairs as he wishes. He wants to be a realistic, successful newspaper publisher. Said he last week: “I’m trying to learn the game as fast as I can. I’m very serious about it. I feel that my papers are potentially profitable. Believe me, I’m in this thing to stay.” This attitude apparently accounted for shifts toward realism in PM and the Sun.

Back Track. Indications are that PM will go after amusement advertising mainly, perhaps because three years of blasting away at Standard Oil, General Motors, Henry Ford, et al.—and at industry and finance in general—have not exactly built up mutual esteem. And labor unions, with whom PM cuddles, have not yet become heavy advertisers.

The immediate excuse for PM’s pending back track: it cannot be profitable until its circulation, now reported to be about 140,000, gets up near 200,000.

The Sun, waging editorial war with increasing effectiveness against the fortified, solidly entrenched Chicago Tribune, has a circulation of 300,000-plus, but is not yet making money. Nor do Sun bosses think they will make any until newsprint shortages, which limit circulation, are solved. But the Sun’s new trend toward popular features, plus a new and brighter typographical dress, is helping.

The Sun’s existence, at present, is ruddy, bulky, soft-spoken Editor Field’s main concern. After extraordinary vicissitudes Field has apparently assembled a staff that will ultimately develop its own editorial brawn. Editor Field is increasingly active as head of this staff.

Shirt Sleeves. He lives comfortably but not ostentatiously in Chicago’s Ambassador East Hotel, often walks the three miles to Colonel Frank Knox’s Daily News building, where the Sun is housed. He gets to his small eighth-floor office about 9, reads papers and his mail until n, when the day’s editorial conference starts. As editor, he attends it religiously, sits at the table head in his shirt sleeves, leads the discussion. At first he was timid, usually ending suggestions with a querulous, English-accented “What do you fellows think?” Now he has become surer of himself and of what he wants the Sun to stand for.

Conference over, Field lunches with his men in the News cafe. Afternoons he strides around learning what makes a newspaper tick. Several times he has tried, not too successfully, writing editorials himself. He usually goes home at 5 or 6.

For fun he plays a little dollar-golf or gin rummy. He has little time these days for his stable of blooded mares, and gone are his jaunts to Scottish shooting boxes, to fox hunts in the South. His preSun career sounded like the plot of a Ronald Colman movie (English schools, theArgonne and St. Mihiel, industry, investment banking). Now, Multimillionaire Field, newly realistic, has traded it all for hard, unremitting work.