Trouble in New York

New York has everything. For all the shortcomings, the best New York newspapers are the best in the country. The city is brimful of news. It should be the paradise of the newspaperman.

When Stanley Walker, the inspiring city editor (1928-35) of the Herald Tribune, wrote this eulogy 20 years ago, New York City was indeed something of a newsman's paradise. Journalism had become a profession, and New York was its university. A New York byline was a ticket to fame, a New York salary the way to fortune.

But in the years since then, there has been trouble. New York papers, like most others, have been hard hit by spiraling costs (TIME, June 21) and by competition from TV; readers have moved out of the city, and even though they still commute to work in Manhattan, many have fallen into the bad habit of reading suburban papers. As a result, New York dailies have dropped 9% from the 1947 total circulation peak, although national newspaper circulation is at an alltime high of 54.5 million.

They have dropped more than that in profits. Last week only four of the seven* Manhattan dailies were making money. Operating in the red were the liberal Republican Herald Tribune; the hard-hitting Republican World-Telegram and Sun, flagship of the 19-paper Scripps-Howard chain; and the banner-lining Journal-American, home paper of William R. Hearst Jr.'s 16-paper chain. The august Times, the sassy News, the Fair-Dealing Post have been making money, and so, reportedly, has Hearst's tabloid Mirror. But all their profit margins are down.

Drop in Prestige. The drop in profits has been more than matched in most instances by a drop in prestige. To newsmen around the U.S., New York is no longer the road to glory. Said Hodding Carter, author, and editor of the Greenville (Miss.) Delta Democrat-Times: "Young newspapermen would rather go to Washington or other cities. One big reason is that the provincial papers are paying better and putting out a much better product than they used to."

Manhattan publishers worried little about any possible loss in prestige. But they were deeply concerned about the continuing slide in profits. Said Daily News President F. M. Flynn, boss of the nation's biggest (circ. 2,039,799) and one of the richest U.S. papers: "Anyone who isn't concerned is living in a dream world."

The big question was: How could the papers lick their problems? All were trying in a different way. And in the process they were causing a great change in the way the New York press covers and reports the news.

The Herald Tribune, whose format was once the buttoned-up coat of Republican respectability, has changed it for something like a blazer, as part of its program for a lighter, brighter paper. In addition, the Trib has stopped trying to match the Times in comprehensive news coverage. Trib Publisher Helen Rogers Reid and her two sons, Editor Whitelaw ("Whitey"), 41, and Vice President Ogden ("Brownie"), 29, are banking on selection rather than mass ("More news in less time"), and the drawing power of probably the best collection of columnists of any U.S. paper (Walter Lippmann, Joe and Stewart Alsop, Roscoe Drummond and David Lawrence for brains; Red Smith, John Crosby and Art Buchwald for fun).

Stories that once would have been buried among the want ads (e.g., Marilyn Monroe's divorce and the Sheppard trial) are now played with headlines and pictures on Page One. While trying to woo away readers who find the Times's heavy news diet indigestible, the Trib is also trying to skim off the upper readers of the tabloid News and Mirror. Three months ago, for the first time in its history, the Trib launched a prize contest, a $25,000 competition called Tangle Towns. It picked up 72,000 readers, jacking up the Trib's circulation to more than 400,000, an alltime high.

Mrs. Reid, who has scrappily run the paper since her husband died in 1947, last week was "very optimistic." In 1946 the paper's profit reached a peak of $1,000,000 after taxes, on a total income of $20 million. Rising costs cut profits to $347,000 by 1949. In 1951 and 1952, said Mrs. Reid, the paper was "slightly on the edge of the red." Last year the Trib counted on a $200,000 profit, but the eleven-day newspaper strike cost it more than $500,000, tumbling the paper into its biggest postwar deficit. This year, on an estimated income of more than $26 million, the Trib will probably be only slightly in the red.

The Times, as hard to move, in its lordly way, as a glacier, was nevertheless showing signs of change. Managing Editor Turner Catledge has ordered sprightlier heads (sample: JAZZ PIANIST DIGS THE SONATA FORM) and shorter and sharper writing. Said one Catledge memo: "The composing room has an unlimited supply of periods available to terminate short, simple sentences." Where the Times had once wanted only "objectivity'' (i.e., facts) in reporting, now objectivity means facts plus interpretation.

Since the paper's owners view the Times "first as a responsibility and second as a business," the declining profits of the Times are not the major reason for the changes. But the profit margin of the paper, one of the wealthiest in the U.S., has dropped so fast that it is a cause for concern. Last year's strike, said Times Publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, cut the paper's earnings to "virtually nothing." The fact that the Times can make money at all is something of a publishing miracle in the face of its overhead and its comparatively ' small circulation (539,435). Its editorial operating expenses are the highest of any paper in the world; its 4,698-employee staff (including 150 local reporters, 65 copy editors, 35 national and 50 foreign correspondents) alone has an annual payroll of $25 million. While Publisher Sulzberger stoutly refuses to cut costs that might damage the paper, he is well aware that "it is to the good health of an organization to keep on making money."

The News, in the words of its late great founder, Captain Joe Patterson, "was built on legs." But it was more than legs that made it the biggest (peak circ. 2,402,346) and one of the most profitable papers in the U.S. Captain Patterson also had an unerring eye for the important, interesting news story to sandwich in between the tales of sensation, told them all in a crisp, flip way under such headlines as: 3,000 BOOLA BOO BROWDER AT YALE.

But since Patterson's death in 1946, readers have noticed the mixture was not as before. To pull out of the slump, the paper set out to rediscover the fun and excitement that Captain Patterson had once found in the city. The News has stepped up the play of city news stories, including a notable series of articles on the troubles of New York's schools (TIME, March 15). Like every other Manhattan daily, it is also trying to follow its readers in their flight to the suburbs, has added six new suburban sections (Westchester County, Nassau, Hudson, etc.) and started do-it-yourself features to appeal to new homeowners. But the journalistic move to the suburbs is not easy. Distribution costs are high, and competition is tough from suburban papers that cover their area with a "hometown" thoroughness no New York paper can match, e.g., Long Island's tabloid Newsday (TIME, Sept. 13). Not long ago, Captain Joe's versatile daughter Alicia Patterson, boss of Newsday, told a New York publisher: "If you come out here, we'll knock hell out of you."

The Journal-American, the first daily started by William Randolph Hearst himself and now the home paper of W. R. Hearst Jr., is the biggest afternoon paper (circ. 669,700). But its circulation is 8% off its peak, and its ad linage last year was down 17%. The Journal's screaming red headlines and crusading zeal once appealed to New York's immigrant population, but this formula no longer works so well. Though it has cut its staff to trim expenses and runs giveaway contests (Cashword Puzzles, Daily Double Racing Game, Lucky Safety Cards) to boost circulation, the Journal contributed to the Hearst chain's loss of $1,266,500 in the first nine months of 1954, the biggest deficit in the chain's history.

The Journal's morning tabloid sister, the Mirror, was started in 1924 with the slogan: "90% entertainment, 10% news"; it still lives up to this. The biggest attraction is Columnist Walter Winchell, plus Drew Pearson and popular comic strips (Li'l Abner, Joe Palooka, Steve Canyon).

The World-Telegram and Sun has followed the trend toward less news, more entertainment. But the paper has lost the verve and excitement of the old World without even keeping the stodgy completeness of the Sun. The Telly (circ. 531,469) has been able to hold only one-third of the readers it took over when it merged with the Sun in 1950. Its ads have declined, and its loss this year is estimated to be more than $750,000.

The Post is the only daily really bucking the circulation trend. In the last five years it has boosted circulation 46%, to 416,622. When James A. Wechsler, 39, became editor in 1949, the paper was deep in the red financially, and its editorials often flirted with the Red politically (TIME, April 18, 1949). Wechsler changed course, and brought it into the black by leavening a heavy diet of Fair Deal politicking with such flamboyant series as "The V-Girls of 1954," "Unwed Mothers" and "Walter Winchell." At the same time, he wooed New York's big Jewish population with its pro-Zionism and coverage of minority problems. Post Publisher Dorothy Schiff, a devout Democrat, believes that politics is one major reason for the paper's new success. Says she: "We are the only 'liberal' [i.e., proDemocratic] daily in the city."

The New Flamboyance. Have the changes in New York produced better papers? "When you publish a paper in a town where the Times blankets the news," says Wechsler, "papers are bound to sell flamboyance rather than quiet news coverage." But flamboyance is not necessarily zestful or exciting journalism. In New York it has often led to sameness (e.g., the tabloid News and Mirror often have the same picture and headline blanketing Page One). The presence of the Times, 20% of whose coverage is national, has also caused many other papers to try to imitate its world view instead of concentrating on news of the city. Too often, the result is neither good world nor good local coverage.

As a result, New York has no "community" paper with which readers identify and turn to in trouble, anger or pleasure the way they do to such dailies as the successful Milwaukee Journal or Scripps-Howard's moneymaking Cleveland Press. The city's dailies have given comparatively little continuing coverage to New York's trouble-ridden police department, traffic problems, housing conditions and soaring crime rate. Some of the papers are making tentative and erratic steps in that direction. But for the most part, in their frantic search for readers, New York's dailies have turned to black type, tricks and entertainment instead of the kind of journalism that once made New York the best newspaper town in the U.S.

*Excluding such specialized dailies as the Wall Street Journal (circ. 135,555), the Journal of Commerce (31,831), the Communist Daily Worker (9,129) and papers whose readers are centered in only one of New York's five boroughs, such as the Brooklyn Eagle (130,565) and the Queens Long Island Press (213,468).

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