The Press: Helping It Happen

When it comes to making or buying news, few newspapers can match London's Daily Mail (circ. 2,138,570) for flamboyance and vanity. Last week, in two swollen self-promotions, the Mail treated its readers to two old-fashioned personalized adventure serials that were even richer than the standard fare in the British press's war for circulation.

INSIDE TORN TIBET, ANOTHER GREAT

WORLD SCOOP, blared a Page One banner headline announcing Mailman Noel Barber's series on "a war nobody knows about." To gather the "whole wicked story" in Tibet, Barber (TIME, Jan. 13, 1958) and Fellow Mail Correspondent Ralph Izzard trekked 200 miles along the rugged Nepal-Tibet border with four Sherpa guides and 40 coolies, who carried their six tents, snow boots, whisky, double-lined sleeping bags, tinned food, drugs and 4,000 French cigarettes. For serious Tibet experts, Barber's panting prose about the guerrilla warfare between Chinese Communists and Tibetan warriors brought guffaws. But then Adventurer Barber once said: "I like to get far away, where nobody knows if I'm wrong."

By midweek Barber was back on page 8. The cause: brown-eyed Balloon Girl Rosemary Mudie, 30, who, along with three male companions, was towed into Barbados by a fisherman after a 24-day, 3,000-mile air and sea passage from the Canary Islands in the boat-bottomed balloon Small World. Headlined Rosemary:

I FOUGHT THE COLD LYING IN MY HUSBAND'S ARMS. When she awoke shivering and wet, Rosemary told Mail readers: "I stood up in the boat and stripped to change. The others were a few feet from me, but it didn't matter a damn."

Small World's landing came as a relief to Mail editors. They had touted the balloon flight as the Kon-Tiki voyage of the air, then began to downplay it when the balloon Small World was unreported for three weeks. When reports of the voyage's success reached London, the Mail changed its type face, said Small World's success was "certainly anticipated," roared "we take responsibility for it." In Barbados Mail reporters took command. The Mail had bought all but American rights to the story for $28,000.

At week's end, in a burst of judgment, the Mail decided the British recognition of Fidel Castro and his revolutionary government in Cuba was Page One fare. But by then, many a Mail reader cared little for such trivia, hurriedly turned to inside pages in search of the balloon girl and Reporter Barber in Tibet.