The Press: Junior Giants

London dailies, the biggest in the world, are trying a new way to grow bigger. They are publishing children’s weeklies. The breezy Laborite tabloid Minor (circ. 4,535,687) started it with Junior Mirror, filled with puzzles, junior sports news, contests, do-it-yourself news, and comics, which has already reached a circulation of 1,300,000. Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express (circ. 4,077,835) followed with a tabloid Junior Express, last week sold more than 900,000 copies. The cheesecake-laden Daily Sketch inserted a Junior Sketch section in one of its regular editions, has upped its circulation more than 50,000. News-Chronicle admitted: “We are at the point of conception on a children’s weekly, but hardly in labor yet.”

The “adult” dailies, which are still restricted on newsprint while advertisers are clamoring for more space, thus took advantage of a new government order that permitted them to get more newsprint for new papers. Sniffed the weekly Economist: “[These papers are] aimed at an age group even younger mentally than their normal public.”