Vanishing Act

Reading newspapers may be a national habit, but it is by no means an addiction. When strikes silence a city's press, the papers involved invariably lose circulation after recovering their voices. And when a paper dies, many of its readers seem to follow it to the grave. Last week, with Hearst's New York Mirror only just put to death (TIME, Oct. 25), the question was: Where did all those 835,000 Mirror readers go?

In the hope of attracting a few strays, newspapers all over the neighborhood boosted their press runs. The Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger rolled an extra 50,000 Sunday copies and sold 20,000. Hearst's evening Manhattan paper, the Journal-American, claimed a gain of 75,000 daily. The New York Times got a 25,000 boost both daily and Sunday. But Vice President Ivan Veit said that the Times's serialization of the Eisenhower memoirs probably accounted for most of that. New York Herald Tribune President Walter Thayer reported a modest circulation rise, but decided not to give a figure. Said he of the refugees from the Mirror: "My guess is that 70% will evaporate."

At the Daily News, which bought the Mirror's good will and some of its features, President Francis M. Flynn played it cautious. As Manhattan's other morning tabloid, the News was the place for Mirror readers to land. But how many actually made the trip remained a secret, although the day the Mirror died, Flynn announced a pressrun increase of 400,000 copies.

Both Veit and Thayer predicted that the departure of the Mirror will carry 500,000 New York newspaper buyers into oblivion. If so, it would be a part of a vanishing act that began in 1957. That year, after raising their price to a dime, the three afternoon dailies collectively lost a 333,000 paid readership --only 46,000 of which has come back. After the city's 114-day newspaper strike last winter, another 500,000 buyers disappeared for good. If prophecies about the Mirror prove true, the total loss will soar past 1,000,000.

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