The Press: Newcomer in Middletown

Starting a daily paper in the U.S.—even a small one—is a job for a millionaire because of high initial investment, high operating costs. But Millionaire Jacob M. Kaplan thought that he could find a cheaper way. Last week Jack Kaplan, president of Welch Grape Juice Co., launched an experimental tabloid that may well blaze a trail for men who want to start small-town newspapers on comparatively small capital. He began publishing his paper in Middletown, N.Y. (pop. 22,586), pitting it against the well-established, conventional Times-Herald, which is owned by another newspaper experimenter, Ralph Ingersoll, founder and publisher of Manhattan’s late pinko daily, PM. Proprietor Ingersoll’s Times-Herald, which has none of the journalistic or political extremism of his old PM, welcomed its new rival with a hospitable editorial.

Justified Lines. Crisply attractive, the new 5¢, 32-page Middletown Daily Record looked different—and it is. The paper is the first sizable venture in daily publishing by a “cold type” photo-offset process instead of conventional letterpress printing. The process uses no hot metal, no Linotype machines, no matrixes or engraved plates. Copy is typed on special typewriters that print “justified” lines, i.e., they fill out each line flush to the right-hand margin. Then it is pasted on a sheet, photographed and printed on an aluminum plate, much as a photographic negative is printed. Mounted on a press, the plate transfers the image to a hard rubber roller, then onto the newsprint. To start publishing, the Record spent less than $250,000 (including $140,000 for actual equipment) against an estimated $600,000, at least, for a paper using a conventional plant. (However, when circulation goes beyond 20,000 the cost of additional electronic apparatus for the new process begins making the old printing method more economical.)

Free Copies. Long fancying a fling in journalism, Millionaire Kaplan first decided on the process, then sent aides scouting systematically through Connecticut and New York State to find the ideal town for the newspaper. To launch his publishing career, Kaplan set up a nonprofit company, brought in David Bernstein, 41, onetime newsman (Ithaca Journal-News) and public-relations specialist, who organized the Office of Public Information of the Philippines in 1945. Bernstein gathered a ten-man editorial staff (average age: 35), put in a U.P. news wire, nine comic strips, twelve syndicated columns. “The paper,” he says, “is strictly independent. Mr. Kaplan wants and has absolutely no editorial control.”

The Record was off to a promising start with advertising (limited to 50% of the paper), plentiful in the first week. It was printing 16,000 copies and giving them away free for a fortnight, expecting paid circulation to jell later at 12,000. After the paper is running smoothly, Publisher Bernstein will go back to Manhattan “to work on other enterprises” for Kaplan, probably a string of similar smalltown dailies using the new process.