The Press: Experiment's End

You could have heard a pica drop in the third-floor city room of Manhattan's shrill PM. Said the mimeographed announcement: Editor-Founder Ralph McAllister Ingersoll was out, advertisements were in.

Neither was a great surprise. In its 6½ years the Great Adless Experiment had cost Publisher Marshall Field III more than $4 million. Ingersoll's plaintive plea last June for 100,000 more readers had been generally regarded as a last-gasp try for profits on circulation alone. But circulation last week was just 170,755—only 5,000 more than when Ingersoll cried for help, and nowhere near enough....