Striking an Old Lady

The face put on the air by New York's Channel 4 last week was unfamiliar to the audience. It belonged to New York Times Washington Bureau Chief James Reston. forced onto a rival medium by New York's newspaper strike.* As a TV newsman. Scotty Reston proved that he will never replace Dave Brinkley; the big eye obviously petrified him. But as he read his column, which appeared in print only in the Times's overseas and Western editions, he also proved, even more emphatically, that Dave Brinkley will never replace Scotty Reston. Timesman Reston managed to communicate to TV's unseen millions a professional's affectionate regard for his paper--even for its faults. It was an evocative statement on what it means to a newspaper reader to be without his newspaper.

Stuns the Mind. "Reading the Times," said Scotty. "is a life career, like raising a family--and almost as difficult. But I've become accustomed to its peculiar ways and can't break the habit. It is a community service, like plumbing.

"This is the season of peace, and somehow--I don't know why--peace seems to have a better chance in the Times. Everybody else seems to be shouting at us and giving the human race six weeks to get out. But the Times is always saying that there was trouble in the 16th century too. It never seems to think that anything is quite as good or as bad as others make it out to be.

"One of the great things about a newspaper, especially on Sunday, is that you can split the thing up and let everybody in the family settle into a quiet trance with the section he likes best. The television makes us all feel a little obsolescent once in a while, but it stuns the mind. It makes you listen to all the news you don't want to hear in order to get around to the news you do want to hear. You can't split up Chet Huntley or throw away part of Dave Brinkley.

''This is one of the great advantages of the Times: you get so much more to throw away. It is impenetrable but indispensable. Other papers cover the news and the Times smothers it, but the reader benefits. People are always dying in the Times who don't seem to die in other papers, and they die at greater length and maybe even with a little more grace."

Cold & Lonely. "Striking the Times is like striking an old lady and deprives the community of all kinds of essential information. If some beautiful girl gets married this week, the television may let us see her gliding radiantly from the church. But what about all those ugly girls who get married every Sunday in the Times?

"Without newspapers, the procedures of life change. Tired men, sick of the human race after a long, gabby day at the office, cannot escape into the life story of Y. A. Tittle or the political perils of Harold Macmillan, but must go on talking to strangers all the way to Westport.

"It's bad enough on the public, but think of a reporter. I've been fielding the Times on my front stoop every morning for 25 years and it's cold and lonely out there now. Besides, how do I know what I think if I can't read what I write?''

* Which, by entering its 20th day last week--without an end in sight--became the longest strike in the city's newspaper history.

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