Stymied by Seniority

NEWSPAPERS In Manhattan's Hotel Commodore, the leaders of three striking New York newspaper unions took up positions in three separate rooms. Representatives of the strikebound World Journal Tribune publishing company were sequestered in still another. Mediators dashed from one group to the next. Chief Mediator David Cole did his desperate best to keep track of what was going on, but by week's end all the activity had produced little in the way of bargaining. "This is a strange kind of thing," complained Cole. "It doesn't seem to respond to ordinary techniques. It's puzzling."

The biggest remaining argument was between the publishers and the Newspaper Guild, which seemed more interested in getting its way than in getting its people back to work. What its leaders want is a hiring policy based on seniority in the strictest sense--meaning that all Guildsmen on all three merged papers would be ranked by time on the job. Women's-page reporters, sportswriters, political specialists would be mixed on the same list, and the roster of those hired would start at the top.

Out of the Reading Habit. Convinced that this was no way to put together three separate, qualified staffs--that too many valuable but junior reporters would be lost in the shuffle and that the morning Herald Tribune might well lose its identity--the editors demurred. Let us rank Guildsmen in groups of specialties, the editors asked. Hiring could then be done by seniority in each group. This time the Guild demurred. All that the mediators could do was to send each side home to work out counterproposals. That still left the problem of deciding on the "dingleberries"--the employees who would be exempt from seniority restrictions because of "special skills and outstanding abilities."

As the negotiations wore on, the inevitable rumors started. Could the Trib survive the strike? New York's Mayor Lindsay assured a reporter that he had considerable doubt; Trib employees in New York and Washington echoed his concern by looking for other jobs. The word was that Columnists Walter Lippmann and Art Buchwald, anxious to hang on to a New York outlet, would sign on with the Times.

Not So Kindhearted. To be sure, all the rumors met with expected denials. New York Times Executive Editor Turner Catledge insisted that his paper was not interested in running syndicated columnists. But with each passing day of the three-week-old strike, the denials sounded thinner. The publishers knew all too well how quickly the public gets out of the habit of reading a newspaper that is not available, and how hard it is to woo them back. It was one thing for a lone and idealistic publisher, Jock Whitney, to keep the Trib going despite its losses. A corporation of which he owned only a third could not be expected to be so kindhearted.

There are big questions about the Sunday World Journal and Tribune too, but the afternoon World Journal is another matter. Even with all the handicaps brought on by the strike, even though the summer, which brings meager advertising to the most successful papers, is fast approaching, the World Journal's future seems bright. With its only competition the tabloid Post, there is obvious room for a second paper. And both Scripps-Howard and Hearst, who have merged their interests in the World Journal, have good reason for hanging on to a base in New York, which is the nation's center of communications and advertising. It would give them more than prestige; it would be a way of writing off the costs of some of their other papers which also have to maintain offices in the city.

The papers will all return, promised a subway and suburban railroad ad--"with the unions' permission, of course." But doubters were growing in number.

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