TELL IT TO SWEENEY

How did Dick Tracy and Little Orphan Annie get their start? What are the economics and the politicis of running a huge newspaper? Joseph Medill Patterson and Robert Rutherford (Colonel) McCormick, cousins who ""had fiercely independent minds and as newspaper men were pros"", watched the unprecedented growth of England's greatest journalistic novelty, The London Mirror. As members of the Chicago Tribune family, they had both the know-how and the means to emulate the Mirror in New York, where newspaper competition has traditionally been greatest. Their Illustrated Daily News, forerunner of the present News, opened its doors on June 26, 1919, using rented presses and space in another paper's building. Today -- with plants of its own in several of New York's boroughs and more ""split runs"" than any other paper -- its circulation, its advertising volume, and its hold on the affections of its readers are phenomenal. Teli It To Sweeney is full of familiar names -- of popular comic strip characters and their cartoonists as well as famous reporters and columnists. John Chapman, who has worked for the News for many years, is proud of his job. He has reported the exciting story of the paper, its scoops, its setbacks, and its successes, as a labor of pride, if not love. His observations tend to ameliorate somewhat the formidable reputations of these two publishing giants, Patterson and McCormick, but no whitewash attempt is made.