The Press: Sun Up in Chicago

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In the battle for newspaper circulation in Chicago, Marshall Field Jr. last week primed a new weapon for his tabloid Sun-Times: Midwest, a 48- to 56-page Sunday rotogravure magazine, to be out next month. Not only does Field want to bring back the 25,000 readers the Sunday Sun-Times lost (present circulation: 587,630) when it boosted the price from 10¢ to 15¢; he hopes to bring in another 25,000 new readers. To run Midwest, Field brought in Veteran Editor Jonathan Kilbourn, 39, who will develop a Sunday magazine different from Parade, which the Sun-Times uses, and This Week. Midwest's 15 departments—e.g., children, crime, health, religion, art—will concentrate on news and features in Chicago, be half-text and half-pictures.

The new Sunday supplement is only a small part of Marshall Field's big plans for the Sun-Times. Months ago wreckers started clearing a site on the Chicago River's north bank near Wabash Avenue. There Field will put up a $9 million newspaper plant, with a waterside dock for unloading newsprint and fast four-color presses that can turn out 112 tabloid pages on one run.

Field can afford to grow. The money-losing paper that he took over in 1950 is now solidly in the black. Unlike his father, who seldom counted the financial cost in backing a project, young Marshall Field Jr. takes after his cost-conscious, merchant-prince grandfather. Though daily circulation slipped (now 556,885), he boosted ads and cut costs by putting every department on a dollar-watching financial footing. Field himself works hard, and he expects every other Sun-Timesman to follow suit. Says one of his top executives: "He's a tough little guy to work for. You get a fair hearing, then you get a budget, and then you gotta stay inside your budget, and you gotta produce."