Thus in summer 1926, Liebling sailed to Europe where he studied French medieval literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. By his own admission his devotion to his studies was purely nominal, as he saw the year as a chance to absorb French life and appreciate French food. Although he stayed for little more than a year, this interval inspired a lifelong love for France and the French, later renewed in his war reporting. He returned to Providence in autumn 1927 to write for the "Journal". He then moved to New York, where he proceeded to campaign for a job on Joseph Pulitzer's "New York World", which carried the work of James M. Cain and Walter Lippmann and was known at the time as "the writer's paper." In order to attract the attention of the city editor, James W. Barrett, Liebling hired an out-of-work Norwegian seaman to walk for three days outside the Pulitzer Building, on Park Row, wearing sandwich boards that read "Hire Joe Liebling". It turned out that Barrett habitually used a different entrance on another street, and never saw the sign. He wrote for the "World" (1930–31) and the "World-Telegram" (1931–35).