Bundles for Publishers?

With a 20-year tradition of amiable meetings, this time the American Society of Newspaper Editors wrangled like Kilkenny cats. Through an entire spring afternoon in Manhattan debate sizzled around the question: Should newspapers go after Government advertising?

As wartime has gradually reduced newspaper advertising receipts, this issue has become a No. 1 publishing controversy. Editor & Publisher has answered the question with many a loud "Yea." But one editor who does not follow Editor & Publisher in all matters is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's hard-hitting, bland-faced Chief Editorialist Ralph Coghlan. At the Editors' convention he offered a resolution declaring that it was against good publishing policy for a newspaper to solicit or even to accept paid advertising from the Government.

Cried Coghlan: "The. minute newspapers accept money from the Government you have a situation where the camel's nose can get under the tent. Government can then reward its friends and punish its enemies. Can the press afford to expose itself to the charge of Bundles for Publishers?"

When an editor suggested that Government advertising was not editors' business, Editor Coghlan shot back: "I suggest that the meetings of this Society be scheduled after those of the publishers [ANPA] so that we can rubber-stamp their proceedings."

When the resolution was tabled, past President William Allen White rose to a point of personal privilege. "I wear no man's dog collar," said the benign old Emporian. "If this resolution is going to be killed, I will have to resign from the Society."

The resolution was promptly untabled. In its final form, vaguely opposing "subsidies for the press," the resolution will go to members for mail vote.

In a half-column editorial Editor Coghlan expanded his arguments: 1) business advertising enabled publishers to become independent, thus harder for Government to control; 2) the French press became venal largely because it was subsidized by bureaucrats and politicians. He concluded: ". . . Any move that would tend to put the dollar sign on the patriotism of newspapers would mean a loss of prestige and of public trust which would more than offset any advertising profit."

But on most papers publishers, not editors, have the final say on advertising. At the American Newspaper Publishers Association convention, three days later, Editor & Publisher's views were more popular. Said the Gannett chain's General Manager Frank E. Tripp: Government advertising (about $60,000,000 worth a year), written by real admen, would buck up the war effort, "make Goebbels look like a sandwich man."

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