New York Without Papers

For a New Yorker, a daily newspaper is not only a connecting link with the outside world, but also a comforting buffer against it. Swaying in the subways, slouched in commuter trains, even making a course along the city's crowded sidewalks, he can let in the news and shut out his neighbors by huddling behind his paper. Last week New Yorkers were woefully underread and unprotected. Closed down by a strike of their deliverers were the city's nine major newspapers* with a daily circulation of some 5,700,000.

The shutdown was caused by just 877 men from the independent, closely knit Union of Newspaper and Mail Deliverers. Only 37% of the union showed up to vote on the offer of a $4-a-week raise, which would run pay to $107.82 for a 40-hr. daytime week, plus another boost of $3 a week after a year. The 37% voted down the settlement, 877 to 772, although it had been agreed upon by employers and union negotiators, and the picket lines went up. The papers still managed to get out issues for sale at their buildings. Enterprising newsboys bought copies by the armload, scalped them for as much as $1 each in bars; a record store pushed up its sales 45% by giving away a paper with every purchase. But all the papers finally gave up after two days when the printers refused to cross the picket lines, and daily printed news was cut off from some 8,000,000 New Yorkers.

The Times Marches On. Coming with the peak of Christmas advertising, the strike was a bitter economic blow for New York papers. By missing its mid-December Sunday issue, the Times alone lost some $1,000,000 in ad revenue. Characteristically, the Times went on in its role as daily recorder of history. A full force of newsmen under Managing Editor Turner Catledge and Assistant M.E. Theodore M. Bernstein went imperturbably through the task of putting out a paper every day, writing copy and headlines, dummying the pages and then sending the work to the morgue instead of the composing room. When the strike is over, the Times will publish a condensed edition bringing history up to date with two pages of news for each day it did not publish. The Times even had a reporter covering the strike, obligingly set up a news desk to feed stories to New York's 17 radio and 7 television stations that compete with the paper's radio station WQXR.

The other papers, which must keep a colder eye on the ledger, laid off most of their newsmen. The Herald Tribune retained key staffers, managed to keep up a normal flow of news to its Paris-printed edition, which delivered without interruption. At the New Dealing Post, Editor James Wechsler heard that Publisher Dorothy Schiff had "furloughed" her men, stalked out on leave without pay, along with his staff. Cooed Dolly: "It's typical of Jimmy's nobility to have done that."

Pros & Amateurs. New Yorkers were fed a low-calorie diet of daily news from strange and familiar sources. The city's radio and television stations stepped up coverage, read excerpts from the columnists. On Sunday the Times and NBC sponsored an hourlong, live-television news show that carried Timesmen's reports from New York, Washington and Europe. The Spanish-language El Diario began running two pages of news in English, doubled its press run to 140,000, had to turn away advertising. The National Enquirer, weekly sex-and-gossip sheet, put out an extra issue with some news between the covers.

Amateur newsmen gallantly took to the field. Student editors of New York University's Square Journal put out a twelve-page edition using wire-service copy, and Harvard Crimson staffers rushed down from Cambridge with 8,000 copies of a "New York Edition." For their commuter trade, the New York Central mimeographed a neatly capsuled news summary ("Oldest daily railroad commuter newspaper in New York City"). Not to be outdone, the Long Island Rail Road and the Long Island Press displayed news bulletins in Pennsylvania Station. Schrafft's chain with 39 Manhattan restaurants, presented their customers with a news resume along with their menus.

Newsmagazine sales rose by 40%, and vendors found they were selling out income tax guides, the Hobo News, and paperbound books from James M. Cain to Stendhal. Subscribers to the Wall Street Journal angrily reported that their copies were being stolen from in front of their office doors. No New Yorkers were more dismayed by the strike than the numbers-game players: the payoff number is currently derived from the total mutuel take at Maryland's Pimlico race course, a figure that conveniently is carried by the daily press.

In all New York last week only one spot greeted the newspaper strike with understandable equanimity: the Sanitation Department. Reported Commissioner Paul R. Screvane: "Litter collections are off 25%."

* The morning Times (circ. 633,106), Mirror (890,596), News (2,014,542), Herald Tribune (377,400); the afternoon Journal-American (580,006), World-Telegram and Sun (473,732), Post (351,439), Long Island Press (283,967), and Long Island Star-Journal (99,222).

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