European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - April 17, 1948, Darmstadt, Hesse From glassed in Bird editor Ken Zumwalt surveys activities of the stars and stripes City room located in a converted German warehouse. Production men Elmer prank left and Dennis Newstead put a hand to a finished Page form. Frank is a former i Newstead a British army Veteran. The Gas daily turns Proi by Ralph l. Harwood. Photographs by edouard Renner and Raymond Lawrence Ping staff presses part of the extensive publishing Plant which the organization has built up since end of War rattle through nightly run of 57,000 copies. Most of the wartime literature involving the stars and i daily As a rambunctious news Sheet put. Together out of whatever materials its Rowdy staff Man aged to coax scrounge or lift from their own army and the native Economy of any country in which they happened Coset up shop. In the couple of years since the end of the War that idea has becomes dated As a Slit Enterprise which celebrates its sixth birthday on april 18 has become just that a big business running profitably under its. Own a fledgling tycoon stripes has its lingers in several pies. In addition to the daily newspaper with which the whole business started these include week end and the stars and stripes distribution service a kind of occupation Union news co. Which handles and Sells a Quarter of a million dollars Worth of magazines newspapers and books to dec customers every whole works goes under the slightly misleading name of the Sta Sand stripes fund sometimes irreverently referred to As the Kitty by the army officers and civilians who run the show on behalf of the american tax payers who tossed the first pennies into the barrel. In its present state the Kitty adds up to a Little matter of $843,000 in assets. The company s current profit fatten it at the rate of about �5000 a month. Even after some �80,000 has been skimmed off in expenses and salaries for More than 1500 employees. While these figures look somewhat extravagant to the average Reader mounting operational and production costs make it necessary to plow Back into the business every Nickel stripes can get its hands on. We used to have a lot of taxpayers Cash invested i. Us says lieutenant colonel William m. Summers editor in chief of both the daily and the weekly Magazine and administrator of the fund but we be paid All that Back. Now that we re completely on our own financially we be got to watch what we do even More closely than if we were an aver age commercial firm in business for our stripes books Are subject to Semi annual audit by the Neucom a. Dit Agency and to annual inspection bythe inspector general s division of the. Army. They Don t take maybe for a answer Summers observes and when. There is a profit w Rich is not needed i keeping the business financially solvent they see that that Money goes into the Central welfare As the firm s oldest investment these ars and stripes has settled Down to the Normal routine of daily newspapers Back Home. The editors Are pretty conscious of their connection past an present with the army and make a certain Effort to retain the soldierly flavor of the wartime stripes. This in t difficult with a number of returned stripes veterans hanging on to the rim of the desk or sprinkled through Man of the paper s bureaus from new York to Vienna. Managing editor Ken Zum Waltis himself a former Soldier editor of stripes Nice the War stripes has become the principal european Haven of expatriate am Dean newspapermen. The paper has had much to recommend it to journey Man journalists especially those weary of plying their Trade for zlotys Drach Mas or French francs. Pay at of Ungstad and its outposts around the continent i always in Good solid military payment certificates at a rate comparable to what new York newspapermen get with the help of the newspaper the staff s desks flows a daily average of 80,000 to 100,000 words of news poured in from the 11 stripes bureaus including one in new York the three major american news services and various army and military government information offices. We try to handle this says Man aging eff Tor Zumwalt the same Way we handled news during the War without political Bias without any sort of editorial in a recent speech before the House a stripes critic stated that he believed highly poisonous material i being injected into stars arid stripes material which can Only affect in an in Jurious Way the morale of our boys in Germany " and suggested that this might be of sheer stupidity or communist influence within military government. His charges failed to arouse much support on either Side of the at lactic. The russians especially disagreed for just about that time they were at tacking stripes for what they considered its anti communist views. With National elections in the offing Zumwalt and his desk Side minions will be confronted with a More acute problem than they ordinarily face in maintaining absolute neutrality. A Early As the fall of 46, the paper was criticized for running a Story from its next York Bureau on beginnings of the Eisenhower presidential Boom. In 1944,Republican and democratic party speeches and National committee re leases were actually balanced out in an Inch by Inch tally. Similar measures to keep the paper beyond criticism for sup posed partisanship probably will be effected again this year. Some of the company s most strenuous efforts during the last year have gone into building up Competition for its own products. This novel approach is the work of the stars and stripes distribution service which puts 104 different periodicals plus Well Over a Hundred pocket sized books an full fledged Best Sellers up against stripes and weekend. When the Sta Sand stripes organization took Over the Job of feeding dec readers from Euco Exchange system last summer it was already tooled up with a network of newspaper circulation routes stretching from Paris to Berlin and from Bremer Haven to Trieste. Since setting up the first newsstand in a Chain that has now grown to 368, the distribution service has More than tripled its business. In the Competition for this slice of the dec paycheck Thel company s own publications have come off pretty daily paper with its 63,000 circus. Lation remains the most widely read commodity handled by the distribution service. Weekend leads the Over the counter Parad � of weekly publications with a Sale of around 30,000 per Issue Topping life its closest competitor by nearly 10,000. The saturday evening Post runs third with about 18,000 readers in the dec. Midnight loading starts papers on Way to readers throughout dec. Weekend april 1, i
