Big Deal in Georgia

For more than two years, rumors have been abroad that a big newspaper deal would shortly pop up in Atlanta. Last week that rumor ripened into fact. Dayton Publisher James Middleton Cox, thrice Governor of Ohio. Democratic candidate for President of the United States in 1920 against Ohio Publisher Warren Gamaliel Harding, stepped from a plane in Atlanta to announce that he had bought two papers: the Atlanta Journal and William Randolph Hearst's Atlanta Georgian. With them he got the Journal's 50,000-watt radio station, WTSB, and a 40% interest in another, less important transmitter, WAGA.

The Journal outfit cost Publisher Cox $1,943,685 in cold cash (for a 70% interest), plus an agreement to pay $761,400 more for the remaining 30% of its stock. For the Georgian, he gave Hearst $800,000, of which $300,000 was for good will. So Mr. Cox's Atlanta purchases cost him a total of approximately $3,500,000. To Cleveland Financier M. Smith Davis, for negotiating 1939's biggest newspaper deal, went a commission of over $150,000.

The Georgian suspended publication at week's end, turning its features and news services over to the Journal. That left Atlanta with just two daily newspapers, one of them Clark Howell's famed old Constitution. For years the Journal and the Constitution, both owned by influential Atlanta families, have combined to fight the Georgian, Hearst's Yankee interloper. With the Georgian gone, Atlanta can look forward to a hot battle between Journal and Constitution.

Not so well known nationally as the Constitution, the Journal has a bigger name in Georgia. Last year, with 97,850 circulation, it had passed the Constitution (91,007), was Atlanta's biggest newspaper. It ranked third in the South, after the Memphis Commercial Appeal (124,010) and the New Orleans Times-Picayune (109,825), almost lived up to its slogan: "The Journal Covers Dixie Like the Dew." Atlanta newsmen used to wisecrack: "Yeah, it's all wet!" For the Journal had grown fat and stodgy; its editorial stand was typified by an annual piece called March Comes in A-Blowin'.

As for the Georgian, it was way behind. With a circulation of only 75,178, and such local advertising crumbs as the Journal and the Constitution dropped from their table, rumor said the Georgian had lost around $200,000 a year. Ably edited, it was blighted by a succession of Hearst experts from the North who could not understand the South's temper. Sale of the Georgian leaves Hearst's depleted empire with 17 newspapers, only one (the San Antonio Light) in the South.

Two days after Cox arrived in Atlanta to take charge of the Journal, Atlanta's citizens crowded into a theatre to celebrate the premiere of a picture based on the work of a onetime Journal reporter: Margaret Mitchell (see p. 30). Cracked newsmen as Cox alighted at Candler Field: "He must have bought the Journal so he could get a ticket to the opening."

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