The Press: Going National

Unlike Britain, a compact country abounding with newspapers of national character (ten daily, eight Sunday), the U.S. has no national newspapers. And there are many who doubt that the U.S. needs or would sustain one. The functions of a national newspaper are already performed by some of the nation’s newsmagazines, as well as by news coverage on radio and TV. Moreover, the continental span—2,807 miles—poses formidable problems to any paper trying to reach readers in Los Angeles, New York, Madawaska, Me., and Brownsville, Texas, with the same news at the same time. But despite such obstacles, two U.S. dailies were busy last week preparing to assume a national look.

Complete Credentials. Of the two, the one with the more nearly complete set of national credentials is the Wall Street Journal (circ. 774,000). Although the Journal is not a daily of general coverage but a newspaper for businessmen, its four regional editions (Pacific, Eastern, Midwest, Southwest) already give it national distribution. On the Journal’s broad distribution base—subscribers in all but a handful of the nation’s 3,072 counties—the paper is now preparing to publish a national weekly newspaper of general interest.

Named the National Observer, a title acquired from a Minneapolis monthly devoted to Masonry, the Journal’s offspring will be born sometime early next year. It will be patterned roughly after Britain’s big Sunday nationals, notably the Observer and the Sunday Times. And although it will keep the Journal’s six-column makeup, the Observer’s resemblance to its parent will end there. It will use pictures, which the Journal almost never does. Business news, says Journal Editor Vermont C. Royster, will vie for space with the full spectrum of world events: “This will be a paper aimed at the intelligent reader interested in what goes on around him.” If a preliminary trial run in Washington, D.C. proves successful, the Observer is likely to branch out into the same multiple publication as its parent. And it hopes to pick up much the same sort of regional advertising that underpins the Journal’s four editions. Projected cost per copy: 25¢ for a 16-to 32-page paper.

By Installments. The other paper with national aspirations is the New York Times, (circ. 680,000) which, although it is printed only in New York, already has subscribers in all 50 states. The Times plans to go national by installments. Encouraged by the success of the Wall Street Journal’s Pacific Coast edition (circ. 137,000), the Times), will introduce installment No. 1 late next year: a Los Angeles-based West Coast edition. It intends to solicit much of its circulation in the Los Angeles area. But the Western Times also intends to reach far-flung subscribers by airmail on the day of issue elsewhere in California, in Oregon and Washington, and possibly Alaska, British Columbia and Mexico. On a selective basis, the Times will also invade inland points such as Reno, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Phoenix.

The 75-man West Coast Times staff will consist largely of advertising, circulation and distribution personnel. Similarly, the duties of John B. Olson, 41, who was hired away from the St. Petersburg, Fla., Times to take charge in Los Angeles, will be more managerial than editorial. Like the Times’s Paris-based international edition (which in a year has scarcely put a dent in the New York Herald Tribune’s solidly established European edition, also headquartered in Paris), the Western Times will be written almost entirely in New York. The whole operation will be bossed from New York by Assistant General Manager Andrew Fisher, 40. Borrowing a practice long used by national magazines, the Times will transmit stories west by perforated tapes that will activate automatic typesetting machines at the Times’s Los Angeles job-printer.

To be published every day but Sunday, the Western Times hopes to attract regional ads with a package deal: advertisers can buy space in either the Western or parent edition, or both. But while the paper will compete with Western dailies for advertisements, it does not intend to compete for local news coverage. Western subscribers will get the New York Times minus those stories of purely parochial East Coast interest.

As an Eastern import, the Times will buck some sturdy Western papers, among them the San Francisco Chronicle—one of the fastest-growing dailies in the U.S.—and the big, powerful, conservative Los Angeles Times (circ. 549,000). But Los Angeles Times Publisher Norman Chandler sees little chance of collision with the invader: “I think it’s more apt to be competitive with the Wall Street Journal.” Estimated size of the Western Times: 32 pages, or about half the size of the New York paper. Estimated starting circulation: 100,000. Newsstand price: 10¢.