Monday, Sept. 30, 1963
A TENSE MOMENT—Coach Jack Mitchell and his No. 2 quarterback, Sid Micek, intently watch action in the second half of the KU-Syracuse game Saturday. The Jayhawks upset the Orangemen, 10-0, in the Stadium Expansion Dedication Day game. The Jayhawks' points were the result of a 28-yard field goal by Gary Duff, a 26-yard run by Gale Sayers and a lot of team determination to win.
Journalist Interprets Readership Surveys
By Tom Coffman
A newspaper story of a four-year-old boy lost overnight will be read by three times as many people as a story of an earthquake in Yugoslavia killing 300 people, according to Charles A. Allen, director of the School of Journalism at Oklahoma State University.
He made this observation in a speech on "What People Do Not Read in the Newspapers" yesterday at a newspaper circulation manager's school in the English room of the Kansas Union.
Allen has made 69 readership studies of different newspapers in the past 25 years. A readership study is a controlled survey of what is read in the newspaper.
HE STRESSED readers' preference for local news and human interest stories over national and international news stories.
In World War II, Allen said, one newspaper he studied carried a front page story under a banner headline which said the U.S. was winning the war. A small item at the bottom of the page entitled "Sugar Stamp No. 10 to be Good on Tuesday," was read by almost twice as many of the readers surveyed.
"People want to read about what hits them closest to home," he said. Weather forecasts are one of the best-read items in any paper, Allen said.
"You can 'bury' it in the back pages and it will still have a high readership score," he said.
LAWRENCE, KANSAS
Human interest stories do not have to be "tear-jerkers" to attract attention," Allen said. "A million good features about the lives of common folks are over-looked because the wire service comes in with a lot of blood and thunder which gets printed," he said.
HUMAN INTEREST features attract attention because readers can identify with the basic human values they contain. Allen believes. In a recent study of the Kansas City Star, Allen found that a picture of a bird which was building its nest on a porch railing next to a factory-made bird-house had a high readership score. The nest had been torn down, and the bird was re-building it.
Long interpretive and back-ground articles are not widely read, Allen said, "although a newspaper is a thin billboard without them." He believes illustrations, graphs, and charts improve the readership in this area.
COMIC STRIPS have high readership, but it has declined since World War II, according to Allen.
"It was more than a picture of a bird," he said. "It went deeper, into our admiration for those who fight for their homes."
Fillers, short items of timeless material used to fill out columns are hardly read.
"Who cares what the King of Siam had for breakfast," Allen quipped.
Very few readers work the cross-word puzzles, Allen has found, but he warned the newspapermen against omitting it, because "those odd-balls are among the most articulate subscribers. You drop it and you'll hear about it forever."
Daily hansan
61st Year, No. 12
Suspects Jailed In Alabama For Negro Church Bombing
BIRMINGHAM — (UPI) — Two white men were jailed early today in connection with a church bombing that killed four Negro girls.
JONES' USE of the word "bombings" was taken to mean that the suspects were being questioned about other bombings in Birmingham, where racial violence has flared periodically since last spring, in addition to the church blast.
Col. Al Lingo, head of the Alabama State Police, refused to identify the suspects, who were held on an open charge, but a high city police official said two men identified as R. E. Chambliss and Charles Cagle were being held for state authorities.
BOTH WERE previously connected with Ku Klux Klan activities in Alabama.
The arrests came a few hours after Gov. George C. Wallace's office in Montgomery announced that arrests in connection with the Sept. 15 bombing were imminent.
Wallace's press secretary Bill Jones announced early this morning that the two men had been picked up in connection with the Birmingham bombings.
Chambliss, in his 50s, was once arrested for smashing a photographer's camera at a Klan rally in the Birmingham area and was one of the signers of papers to incorporate a Klan group in the 1950's.
The two suspects, their faces covered with small laundry packages that appeared to contain clean shirts, were husted into the city jail during the pre-dawn hours.
Cagle, 22, lives in a rural area near Birmingham. He was one of six men arrested near Tuscaloosa, Ala., last June 8, three days prior to the first racial integration at the University of Alabama Police said all six were en route to a Ku Klux Klan rally. Cagle was charged with carrying a concealed weapon.
Lingo accompanied the two suspects to the city jail and indicated they were the only two being held. Earlier he had said more than two men were being questioned.
"We're questioning them as hard as we can," Lingo said. "That's something you can't rush."
Land Promise To Enlarge KU
The KU campus is moving west.
With the addition of a 137-acre tract promised by a contract between the KU Endowment Association and a local family, more than half of the 900 acre campus will be on the west side of Iowa Street.
The new tract includes most of the northwest quarter section of land west of Iowa Street between 15th and 23rd Sts.
THE ENDOWMENT Association has owned the land adjoining Iowa Street and east of the new tract for several years.
According to the terms of the contract, Mrs. Harold M. Chamney will turn over to the Endowment Association the 137 acre farm by 1975. However, she has the option to give possession of the land to the university before 1975 if she wishes.
The announcement of the transaction was made by Irving E. Youngberg, executive secretary of the Endowment Association.
No purchase price was announced, but the contract calls for payments by the Endowment Association over several years.
"The ultimate acquisition of the Chamney property will culminate a program of land purchases initiated by the Endowment Association under the leadership of the late Mr. C. C. Stewart 20 years ago, through which KU is assured space for future growth and development," Youngberg said.
He indicated others had been questioned about the bombings during the night.
Rewards totaling nearly $80,000 had been offered in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, including $5,000 put up by Wallace.
BIRMINGHAM and federal authorities, who have been conducting an intensive investigation into the bombing, apparently were caught by surprise by the announcement from Wallace's office.
Police Chief Jamie Moore said his department knew absolutely nothing about the arrests by state police.
Mayor Albert Boutwell complimented state authorities on the arrests and said, "I do hope this is a step in finding all of those responsible and bringing them to justice."
The arrests came about 12 hours prior to the scheduled arrival in the city of Negro leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to confer with integration leaders. King had said last week he would recommend a resumption of racial demonstrations unless certain demands were met by the city.
Model UN to Name Steering Positions
Interviews for positions on the KU-Y Model United Nations steering committee will be at 7 p.m. tomorrow in alcove A of the Kansas Union.
Those qualified for positions on this committee should have attended at least one session of the KU Model United Nations.
Applications will be accepted at the KU-Y office until Tuesday evening.
The organization is associated with the College Conference of Model United Nations and will send two or more members of its steering committee to sit with the national organization.
Fraternity Segregation Desirable To Most Students, HRC Reports
(First of a Three-Part Series)
By Fred Frailey
A majority of KU students want to continue segregation of fraternities and sororites.
This was brought out last week in a 42-page report, by the Human Rights Committee of the All Student Council, giving results of a survey made last spring on student feeling toward race relations.
Strongest in wishing to keep Greek houses segregated were the Greeks themselves. Their sentiment, however, was shared by members of other types of living groups, because all the groups were more in favor of whites and Negroes having separate social organizations than they were against the practice.
THE HRC got response on the issue by posing this statement to 500 randomly-selected students:
"It is best that Negroes have their own fraternities and sororites since they have their own particular attitudes and interests which they can best engage in together."
Of the 304 students answering the questionnaire, 54 per cent registered agreement with this statement, 19 per cent strong agreement.
Greeks registered 76 per cent agreement with the statement. Thirteen per cent of them opposed the proposition and 9 per cent were uncertain.
In contrast, a minority of 32 per cent thought otherwise.
AMONG FRATERNITY MEN, 79
per cent favored Negroes have separate houses and 14 per cent did not. Of sorority women questioned, only 10 per cent wanted to see segregation end, while 75 per cent wanted it to continue.
The other seven types of living groups included in tabulation of the report were not as unanimous in upholding Greek segregation. But no significant group of students were particularly opposed.
The largest block of disagreement with the HRC's statement on the questionnaire came from apartment and boarding residents, 41 per cent of whom were against the present situation. However, 48 per cent of those in this living group believed in continuing segregation.
The gap between approval and disapproval of separate fraternities and sororites was narrowest among members of large men's residence halls. Only 41 per cent from this group sanctioned the practice, compared to the 39 per cent who did not.
Weather
The HRC regarded student reaction to this statement as probably the most important of the 15 it included in its questionnaire.
Fair and warmer weather is predicted tonight and Tuesday. High today will be in the upper 70's and low tonight in the lower 50'. Tuesday temperatures will rise into the 80's.
"FINDING AN ANSWER to this question has been absolutely essential to the continued work of the Human Rights Committee," it said in the report. "Much of the controversy at KU and throughout the campuses of the country has centered on the validity of discrimination and segregation in fraternities and sororites."
Another part of the survey asked whether removal of racially discriminating constitutional clauses of fraternities should be undertaken by the ASC, individual students, the University administration, the Interfraternity Council, the fraternity having the clauses or none of these.
A majority from all eight living groups thought the fraternity itself should be responsible for having such clauses removed. The overall average was 73 per cent. Fraternity men were 65 per cent in favor, sorority women 90 per cent, large residence hall men 78 per cent and large residence hall women 80 per cent.
The significance of that question is cast in doubt by the fact that no sororities and only one fraternity — Sigma Nu — require discrimination by race, Jerry Dykes, commander of the KU Sigma Nu chapter when interviewed by the HRC in November 1962, said the local fraternity supported legislation at the last national convention in 1932 which would have removed the discriminatory clause.
"HOWEVER, the majority. largely constituted of Southern chapters, defeated the proposal," said the HRC.