Efficiency in Cincinnati

For six months, the dark-suited strangers circulated politely through the newsroom of the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Six times an hour they approached each staffer with the same question--"What are you doing?" Everybody knew who they were: efficiency experts from Chicago's Alexander Proudfoot Co. Last week everybody knew the result of their visit: it was all too easily measured by the empty space where desks had been moved from the newsroom.

Rolling Heads. Among the 24 Enquirer staffers eliminated in the name of efficiency were two photographers, seven newsmen, the editor of the Sunday feature page--and Managing Editor Ralph L. Holsinger. The Proudfoot ax also cut swaths through the classified-ad department (15 heads) and the circulation department (five). Only in the composing room did the efficiency experts fall down on the job--only because the shop foremen flatly refused to let them in.

The Cincinnati overhaul began last spring when Proudfoot, which had never before studied a newspaper operation, approached the Enquirer with a confident proposal to find and trim several hundred thousand dollars worth of waste effort. The prospect was warmly welcomed by Charles Staab, 60, the Enquirer's executive vice president and business manager, and something of a fat trimmer himself: eight years of Staab-inspired wow (for "Wipe Out Waste") campaigns have, among other-things, reduced the mail-room staff by introducing automation.

"Excellent Thing." Although the Enquirer had just chalked up its most prosperous year (with net earnings of $1,430,324), and is headed for an even better one. Staab decided to go ahead, saying: "You do not take corrective action after the fact." He expressed delight at Proudfoot's results. "Our studies showed a pool of people not all of whom were busy all the time." Survivors will certainly be busier than before--if only in filling out the new work forms on which staffers must make a daily account for every minute of their time. Down in classified ads, an abbreviated force could not stay abreast of the phone calls--a crisis that the paper met, somewhat inefficiently, by hiring an emergency weekend crew.

Among Enquirer news hands, there were serious doubts that the efficiency of a newspaper, which runs by fits and starts in concert with the uneven flow of the news, could ever be measured by time-and-motion studies.

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