Mason, Elk, Knight

Abraham Lincoln was but faintly famed as a newspaperman. Yet his writings for the Sangamon Journal, Springfield, 111. , were the nursery rhymes from which developed the majestic cadences of the Gettysburg Address. The newspaper with this notable tradition, now named the Illinois State Journal, has just passed to the control of Col. Ira Clifton Copley. One newspaper acquisition at a time is normally enough for growing publishers. Not so Col. Copley. He stretched half across a continent and added almost simultaneously the San Diego Union and Tribune to his pack* of papers.

Col. Copley was married to California three dozen years ago when he took to wife a lady from Los Angeles. Previously he had attended Yale whence he returned to his native Illinois to manage and consolidate gas works. He has represented Illinois in Congress six terms. Newspaper publishing, begun 22 years ago, has finally weaned him utterly from public utilities and public life.

Fifty-two thousand San Diegoists read the Union and Tribune every day. These two papers have been and will be Republican; will try to hoist Hoover to the Presidency. But Col. Copley is no haughty, hard-to-get-to hero of the frigid rich. He is a Mason, an Elk, a Knight of Pythias.

Gannett By Invitation

Frank Ernest Gannett at 52 took into his family am year old child last week. The child had been looking for a father for six years. The question was considered eugenically and Mr. Gannett was chosen on his record as an honest publisher. The child is the Hartford Times and its addition brings Mr. Gannett's newspaper family to ten. Over $5,000,000, noted as the largest cash consideration ever involved in New England newspaper deals, was Mr. Gannett's price of fatherhood.

This aged but immensely healthy newspaper was owned and operated by Alfred E. Burr, pere, and Willie O. Burr, fils, from 1839 to 1921. During the latter years Willie Burr had largely transferred control but he lived to see the paper established in a colonnaded home which com- bines a dignity and beauty rarely found in factories for news production. Valued employees assumed control. Presently they decided on a sale. No whispers went abroad that the Hartford Times was on the market. The owners quietly nominated Frank Gannett because he prints sound, honest newspapers, large and small.

The Hartford Times sells 60,000 papers every day, 20,000 more than its stately contemporary, the Hartford Courant. It has the largest volume of advertising of any daily in New England. It professes independent Democratic tendencies which will be undisturbed. Local executives, in the main, continue to control. Hartford will read the same newspaper.

Frank Gannett believes in managing newspapers as Britain manages her colo-nies--giving every possible independence. He has no central policy to which all must conform. Personally he has Democratic predilections and, oddly enough, approves Prohibition. With his Times-Union he battled bitterly against Republican boss George Aldrich in Rochester and installed a city manager. He is happy to fight furiously over local conditions he considers wrong and should be right.

To this policy of marching under no banner except right and reality Mr. Gannett adds a shrewd hobby. He insists his properties be "home papers." Shoddy sensationalism, cheap dirt, anything that offends "folks" find no space. Such a policy in smaller cities and rural districts is as sure to sell papers as is the astounding filth of the tabloid press in a metropolis. And it leaves the publisher an easy conscience.

The seeds of this system were sowed at Ithaca. Mr. Gannett worked his way through college as a reporter on the Cornell Sun. Ten years later he purchased the Elmira, N. Y. Gazette and merged it to the Star Gazette. Since then his acquisitions include:

Ithaca Journal-News

Rochester Times-Union

Utica Observer-Dispatch

Elmira Advertiser

Newburg (N.Y.) News

Plainfield (N.J.) Courier-News

Beacon (N.Y.) News

Olean (N.Y.) Herald

Hartford Times

Their total circulation is about 250,000. The Beacon News, smallest, has 2,500.

In August, 1926, he went far afield and bought the Twin City Sentinel, Winston-Salem, N. C. (TIME, Aug. 23, 1926). He later sold it.

He will buy other journals. Yet he disslikes the characterization of a "newspaper chain." He prefers separate entities; has no desire to control the destinies of count-less copies from a secluded desk; no wish to make over Connecticut Yankees in the likeness of upstate New York farmers.

To this end it is carefully noted at the conclusion of the announcement in the Hartford Times that his family are good New Englanders, having settled in Scitu- ate, Mass., in 1640. Completely to allay doubts of suspiciously conservative Hartford readers it is further noted that his general manager, Frank E. Tripp's grandmother was Nancy Fairbanks of the Ded- ham, Mass., Fairbankses and that his grandfather was descended from Newport, R. I. Tripps since the 17th century. It is no upstart publishing organization which has accepted Hartford's invitation.

*Includes Aurora Beacon-News, Joliet Herald-Ncws, Elgin Courier, all Illinois.