The automakers had traditionally avoided this problem by briefing reporters well ahead of the new model introductions, but doing so “off the record.” But this year the Journal had declined to participate in the briefings, apparently recognizing that the information could be derived independently and published earlier. As Kilgore later told Time magazine, “For years almost everything in Detroit has been ‘off the record.’ We just decided not to play it that way. It isn’t journalism.”

In fact, the Journal had been easing away from “playing it that way” for three years. In March 1951, reporter Ray Vicker wrote an article on the 1952 model cars which relied heavily on visits to machine tool companies. Vicker was able to determine which engines manufacturers intended to use in which models—V-8’s for Dodge and DeSoto, etc.—as well as other changes, such as the introduction of a new automatic transmission for Cadillac and of power steering for Oldsmobile. But Vicker’s story had dealt almost exclusively with engineering rather than design.

In August 1953, Williams had taken Vicker’s efforts further, and had published a piece on the 1954 model cars quite similar to his later piece on the 1955’s. Its lead: “For Buicks and Oldsmobiles: A thorough restyling job, featuring the “wrap-around” windshield and longer, lower lines.” More such detail followed on Cadillacs, Fords, Mercurys, Hudsons, Chryslers, Pontiacs, Chevvies. But there were two key distinctions between this precursor and Williams’s later story: first, the article on the 1954 cars lacked illustrations; second, it predicted that, “By and large, 1954 will not go down in automotive history as a year of great model changes.” That is, it offered readers no compelling reason to wait for the new models or to stop buying 1953-model cars.

GM’s pent-up fury at the bootlegging story and the premature release of the innovative—and illustrated—1955 new car designs quickly exploded. Curtice himself, while running the Buick division, had years earlier personally made the decision to begin advertising in the Journal. Business Week later reported that Williams’s 1953 story had left GM “particularly incensed”, but no action had been taken. Now, however, on the very day the new-designs story was published, GM, acting through five different advertising agencies, canceled all advertising in the Journal. The immediate cancellations came to just over $11,000, but The New York Times estimated that GM had been running in the Journal at a rate of at least $250,000 annually (nearly $2 million today).

When one of the ad agency representatives told a Journal sales manager that the paper needed to send someone to Detroit and apologize, the ad manager, knowing instinctively how Kilgore would react, said, “You’re talking to the wrong department… I will probably go to Detroit one of these days but it won’t be to apologize for anything.”

GM also cut Williams and his colleagues off from the weekly auto production figures released each Friday. When the Journal asked the Associated Press, a newspaper cooperative of which it was a member, to request the figures so it could use them, the AP was denied access as well. The only other source of the figures was Ward’s Automotive—but that publication had cut the Journal off after the bootlegging article.

Meanwhile, private complaints to the Journal news staff by the GM public relations staff were rebuffed. Then, a week after the new model story, the Journal appeared to rub salt in GM’s wounds. Another front page article by Williams described one Detroit dealer’s desperation tactic of offering a new ’55 car, when they arrived, to anyone who would buy a ’54 model now and accept only wholesale value for their trade-in. Other dealers feared that news of the tactic could pressure prices across the country.

If Curtice had hoped that the Journal’s pro-business editorial page, which had leapt to his defense in the antitrust dispute, would now turn on its own news columns, he was quickly disappointed. On June 16, in an editorial entitled “A Newspaper and Its Readers,” the Journal explained that the two news stories “did not make anything happen. They only provided some more information on what was already happening.”

The editorial went on to declare that “A newspaper exists only to provide information to its readers. It has no other reason for being.” Moreover,

In the end the truth about what is happening is the only thing that is of value to anybody. And when a newspaper begins to suppress news, whether at the behest of its advertisers or on pleas from special segments of business, it will soon cease to be of any service either to its advertisers or to business because it will soon cease to have readers.

Eight letters from readers, seven of them automobile dealers, were published in the Journal the same day as the editorial. Thomas Grasso, of Grasso Motor in Bayonne, New Jersey, wrote that the newspaper “of late has acquired a new hobby, namely, running the automobile business into the gutter.” Fred Walters, of Fred Walters Oldsmobile in Newark, New Jersey, pronounced himself “disappointed and disgusted.” J.R. Sutton, of Sutton Motor in Beaumont, Texas, was canceling his subscription; R.H. Horton, of Horton Chevrolet in Sibley, Iowa, wouldn’t be renewing.

The advertising cancellation and press release cut-off remained unknown to the public. General Motors had not announced them, and the Journal had not reported the story. But at just the moment the editorial and letters were published, the editor of Advertising Age heard of the cancellations at a conference in Montreal. Kilgore soon confirmed the story to Ad Age’s reporter.