To 5,800,000 readers every Sunday go Hearst’s American Weekly (“greatest circulation in the world”) and Comic Weekly. Into Publisher Hearst’s purse clink fat profits from national advertisers at $16,000 a page. Weary of trying to battle Hearst singly on the Sunday front, eleven competitors, led by the Chicago Tribune, banded together two years ago to sell comic section advertising for the group. Last week 21 newspapers east of the Rockies formed a gang to carry the fight to the American Weekly.
The new group, named United Newspaper Magazine Corp., includes such potent members as the New York Herald Tribune, Chicago Daily News, Baltimore Sim, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Washington Star, Boston Herald, St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Beginning Feb. 24 the 21 will appear with the identical Sunday* tabloid magazine called This Week. Combined circulation: 4,051,000. Advertising rate: $10,000 a page. This Week’s editor will be the Herald Tribune’s Mrs. William Brown Meloney (TIME, Oct. 8). She will make it more conservative than The American Weekly, with first-run fiction, tony articles.
Back of the venture is Alco Gravure Inc., controlled by Joseph Palmer Knapp who heads Crowell Publishing Co. and whose father set up an insurance company out of which grew Metropolitan Life.
*Saturday for the Chicago Daily News
More Must-Reads from TIME
- How Donald Trump Won
- The Best Inventions of 2024
- Why Sleep Is the Key to Living Longer
- Robert Zemeckis Just Wants to Move You
- How to Break 8 Toxic Communication Habits
- Nicola Coughlan Bet on Herself—And Won
- Why Vinegar Is So Good for You
- Meet TIME's Newest Class of Next Generation Leaders
Contact us at letters@time.com