Press: Shift

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Davis Merwin last week took his doctor's advice, resigned as publisher of the Minneapolis Star, prepared to go on a long holiday in the tropics beginning with a Caribbean cruise. Since June 1935, when Des Moines's Brothers John & Gardner Cowles Jr. paid $1,000,000 for the Star and hired their intimate friend Dave Merwin to run it, the Star's weak 80,000 circulation has been pushed to 135,000. Previously publisher of the strong little Bloomington (Ill.) Pantagraph which has been in his family 101 years, Dave Merwin made a place for the Star in Minneapolis largely by pointing his editorial finger at civic corruption. In two years the Star outstripped the circulation of its two evening rivals.

Determined to maintain the Star in high gear, President John Cowles took an apartment in Minneapolis to be close to the job and returned hard-bitten General Manager John Thompson to the publisher's post which he held until 1935. To edit the Star ably, Owners Cowles shifted from their Des Moines Register & Tribune 200-Ib. Managing Editor Basil Leon ("Stuffy") Walters, whose stubby nose scents news leagues away.