The newspaper did not renew. The article inside it is syndicated copy, and the syndicate did.
Do not treat this clipping as public domain. The expiration argument that clears the 1941 menu does not reach it.
Two separate copyrights sit on this page. The issue copyright, belonging to the newspaper, shows no renewal: the Daily Monitor Leader does not appear anywhere in the inventory of periodicals with renewed issue or contribution copyrights for 1931 to 1950. That much is clean.
But the article is not the newspaper's own work. It is bylined "BY HARRY GRAYSON, NEA Staff Correspondent", making it syndicated copy from the Newspaper Enterprise Association, and it therefore carries a contribution copyright of its own. NEA Service Weekly has contribution renewals running from 11 June 1945. This issue is 14 August 1945, two months inside that window. Whether this specific column was among the renewed contributions has not been established, and until it is, expiration cannot be relied on.
Periodicals, particularly newspapers, may include material that originated elsewhere (such as wire service stories, syndicated comics and columns, and reprints). Those may be still copyrighted even if the material original to the periodical is not.
The newspaper's silence in 1972 would carry the issue into the public domain. The syndicate's filing in the same year is what stops the clipping following it.
Newspapers are periodicals, Class B. The Stanford Copyright Renewal Database used for the menu covers Class A, books and pamphlets, and does not contain newspapers at all, so a zero there would have meant nothing. The instrument for this question is the Online Books Page inventory, which states it should include every periodical with renewed issue or contribution copyrights for 1931 to 1950 issues. The two control rows confirm the corpus holds Michigan dailies and holds 1945 renewals, so the absence in row one is real absence.
| Record set | Scope | Window | Terms | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First copyright renewals for periodicals Online Books Page, from the CCE |
Issue and contribution renewals for 1931 to 1950 issues, filed 1958 to 1977 | All | monitor leader · monitor-leader · daily monitor · mount clemens · mt. clemens · macomb | 0 hits |
| Same | The syndicate that produced the article | All | NEA · Newspaper Enterprise Association | NEA Service Weekly. Issues renewed from 8 Jan 1951. Contributions renewed from 11 Jun 1945. |
| Control | A Michigan daily newspaper with 1945 renewals, to prove the corpus holds them | All | The Detroit News | Contributions renewed from 26 Apr 1945; see 1972 July-December |
| Control | A Michigan daily recorded with explicit negatives, to prove absence is stated not omitted | All | Detroit Free Press | No issue renewals; no contribution renewals |
NEA Service Weekly : issues renewed from © January 8, 1951; see CPRS; contributions renewed from © June 11, 1945; see 1972 July-December
NEA is the Newspaper Enterprise Association, the Scripps-Howard feature syndicate that employed Harry Grayson. The entry records that contributions to its service were being renewed from 11 June 1945, filed in the 1972 July to December volume of the Catalog of Copyright Entries. Our issue is 14 August 1945. That is inside the window, which is why this record ends in a caution rather than a clearance.
Two control rows confirm the corpus contains Michigan dailies, 1945 renewals, and explicit negatives. The absence of this title is absence.
We know NEA renewed contributions in this period. We have not read the 1972 July to December volume to see whether this column is among them.
A clean newspaper and a renewed contribution produce a clipping you still cannot publish freely. The weaker finding governs.
Reading the named CCE volume would resolve it either way, as would a Copyright Office search report. Neither has been done.
Page number. This article previously cited the clipping as page 36. That is the Library of Congress image sequence number. The printed folio, visible in the page header beside the running head, is page 16 of the V-J edition. Corrected in the article on 4 September 2026.
Prepared 4 September 2026 for the Swizzle archive. This record states the result of a documentary search and the reasoning applied to it. It is not legal advice. Where it reaches no conclusion it says so, and the house position above is written to be safe under either answer.