Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 84, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1920 — “DON’T BUY” PLEA OF TRIBUNE SENT FORTH AS NEWS [ARTICLE]

“DON’T BUY” PLEA OF TRIBUNE SENT FORTH AS NEWS

The United News sent out a dis-! patch to its papers Monday under. a Chicago date as follows; “ ‘Don’t buy a Tribune—borrow one!’”. . yr “That appeal, a heresy to circulation managers, appeared prominently on the front page of the Chicago Tribune today. According to the Tribune’s publishers, the appeal is sincere. It will stand on the front Eage to ward off the battalions of uyers who have not been frightened off by curtailment of news and advertising space and lack of promotional plan*. “It is the latest attempt of The Tribune to save print paper. Circulation, the ancient goaf of every news paper, means consumption of print paper. And The Tribune has been trying fruitlessly, with all the accepted schemes, to .keep consumption. within the producing mark of its mills. Therefore this cry. . “ ‘Perhaps this plan won’t work,’ Col. R. R. McCormick- said today. 'We hope it will. It is based on the idea that all any one wants for a paper is to have it read. That’s all the advertiser wants, all the publisher wants, and it satisfies the writer. “ ‘lf the Tribune could be taken into a rooming house, say, and passed around, instead of having ten copies delivered for the same amount of reading, everyone would be satisfied. “ ‘The Northcliffe papers in England made this same appeal during the war. I can’t say how well it worked, but it appealed to us as worth a trial. “ ‘The fact that circulation leaped ahead in the last year in the face of all its discouragements puzzled Tribune officers. A gain of 50,000 daily and 100,000 Sunday was shown in the year following the end of the war. “ ‘All that came without the pull of war news and with restrictions on news space,* Col. McCormick said. ‘No one knows why. ' | “ ‘To do away with any chance of a possible preversenesfe on the part of the public, the appeal to borrow The Tribune appears in the paper only. It will not be made through other papers or on billboards.’ ”.