The Press: Contempt in Denver

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The cherished and advertised tradition of the Scripps-Howard newspapers includes youthful editors & managers, vigorous liberalism, fearless honesty. Newsreaders were shocked last week to read testimony which, if true, would smirch Scripps-Howard with one of the lowest tricks in the newspaper business—padding circulation figures. The scene was the trial, for fraud, of four officials of Scripps-Howard's Youngstown (Ohio) Telegram. Facts: In October 1931, the Telegram declared its average circulation for the previous six months to be 35,610. Audit Bureau of Circulation investigated, found the figure too high. The Telegram made its own investigation, removed the circulation manager, published in December an amended figure: 34,698. Prosecutor Ray L. Thomas, oldtime enemy of the Telegram whom the paper had tried to have ousted, got indictments against the officials, charging that they well knew the 34,698 figure was still too high "by several thousands." Last week the prosecutor led a procession of Telegram and ex-Telegram circulation wranglers, newsboys, truck loaders, bookkeepers, etc. over the witness stand. Sample testimony: ¶ District circulators were compelled to take anywhere from 85 to 500 daily copies above the number they could sell. They were not allowed to return unsold copies, but at intervals their debits in extra copies would be charged off to profit & loss. Those debits would be distributed against the names of non-existent newsboys whose names, in one case, were copied from cemetery tombstones with addresses of vacant houses.

¶ Distributors were ordered to "eat" what copies they could not sell. "Eating" meant burning the papers, selling them for junk, hiding them in cellars & attics, dumping them in the Mahoning River. ¶ Newsboys were compelled to pay for unsold copies of a special ''Progress Edition.'' Penalty: loss of route.

Scripps-Howard, admitting the difficulty of keeping circulation straw-bosses honest,

charged a plot between Prosecutor Thomas and the circulation manager of the opposition Vindicator, who had been fired by Scripps-Howard and allegedly vowed to

"get even." He, and several other ex-Telegram employes now working for the Vindicator, were state witnesses.