There seems to be a typographic error; the second sentence doesn't quite parse and is missing an initial capital.
As I said above, it makes perfect sense if you substitute a comma for the full stop, which also explains the missing capital. And "back where he started" in your translation is incorrect; "zurücklegte" refers to the newspaper, not to himself, ie he gave it up.
The first newspaper very well could have been named "Green Leaves". You are just speculating based on context, but you cannot positively rule out that the paper was named "Green Leaves" without personal knowledge. It could have been a double entendre as well.