The Press: Wings

For four days, in a series of test flights, the Post Office Department conducted a series of transcontinental mail flights. In no case did the aeroplanes carrying mail across the country need more than 30 hours to complete the trip. In one case the trip was made in 26 hours and 9 minutes—41 minutes less than the transcontinental flight record. Of course, the corollary of this attainment was that San Francisco and New York read each other's newspapers hardly more than 24 hours after publication. As the telegraph, cable and wireless have speeded up news transmission to those department stores of knowledge, the daily newspapers, so the aeroplane, it seems, will accelerate the news department stores' deliveries to their customers. Assuming that such a thing as aeroplane circulation for newspapers develops, it will open new journalistic problems. It will entirely alter the question of what is the proper size of a newspaper. National dailies should develop with a national circulation. By competition they might drive local newspapers out of business— much as large metropolitan department stores have treated neighborhood stores. On the other hand, aeroplane delivery would greatly alter the question of what news is worth printing. One of the San Francisco newspapers carried to New York bore in its headlines: BANDITS KILL POKER PLAYER; POSSES SCOUR MOUNTAINS FOR WOUNDED MAN; MRS. KERR FINED $10 FOR BATTERY OF WOMAN. Scandal may be useful for a national circulation, but " local stories" are not. If aeroplanes extend the range of newspaper circulation they may do away with "local news." But they have not yet.