The Press: 59-Day Wonder

Five years ago Earl J. Jones, a drum-chested, muscular, aggressive man, turned up in Zanesville, Ohio.* Without much visible financial backing, he went into the coal-mining business, presently owned several mines, including one of the most modern, all-mechanical excavations in the U. S. To transport his coal along the Muskingum River he bought a barge company.

There were some bad accidents in the mines, and Earl Jones did not like the way the Zanesville morning Times-Recorder and evening Signal (both owned by Father William Oliver, Sons Orville Beck and Henry Clay Littick) reported what happened. Nor did he like it when the Litticks played up several suits against him—one for damage allegedly done by his mine wastes to adjoining lands.

One day last August Earl Jones made up his mind to start a newspaper of his own. He set wreckers to work tearing down a three-story apartment house one block off Zanesville’s main street. When he learned that the job would take two weeks, he brought in crews and equipment from his mines, wrecked the building overnight. Then, under floodlights, working night & day, his men started putting up a new $75,000 brick, steel and concrete newspaper plant.

This week, just 59 days after his men went to work, Earl Jones had his first (Sunday) edition on the street. It was a good, thick paper (four sections, 48 pages), with plenty of color comics, plenty of advertising, plenty of local news on Page 1. The Zanesville News plant was modern and complete, cost $250,000. With latest photographic and engraving equipment and brand-new unit tubular twin-12 presses, it was capable of printing the News in color throughout. Trucks were ready to deliver it daily and Sunday to every home in Muskingum County. And thorough Earl Jones was prepared to spend money to put it over.

Before the News Building was up, the fight began. The Littick family did not plan to let their Zanesville newspaper monopoly go without a struggle. Publisher of the News is Clark Beach, who retired as executive editor of the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette in 1936, was coaxed back to work by Earl Jones. Clark Beach had signed a contract form with a United Pressagent, given him a check for several weeks’ service in advance. But the contract was still to be accepted by U. P.’s Manhattan office when the Litticks stepped in and bought U. P. service for themselves.

Then Clark Beach went to International News Service and found the Litticks had signed for that too. Said I. N. S.: “We prefer to deal with well-established papers.” They had given the Litticks an exclusive contract, and since the Littick papers already held an Associated Press franchise, the News was left without any major wire service.

The Littick contract with U. P. is not exclusive—U. P. is still free to sign with the News if it wishes. But if it did, the Litticks would obviously be annoyed—and to U. P., as to I. N. S., the Littick papers are the safest bet. According to U. P., the terms Earl Jones’s Beach offered were “unreasonable,” therefore not acceptable to the home office. Now Earl Jones threatens to sue, in the hope that he can compel U. P. to give him the wire for which he feels that he contracted. Meanwhile the Litticks are using all three services, and Beach has signed with Transradio Press for five years. Little Transradio (with only 50-odd U. S. newspaper clients, compared with U. P.’s 1,100, and A. P.’s 1,360) is at best a stopgap, may explain why in the midst of a great war the News concentrates on local affairs. But it will give Clark Beach some kind of national and foreign coverage in case he cannot get what he wants from U. P.

* For further news of Zanesville, see p. 44.