New York Afternoon

When the New York World Journal Tribune died unexpectedly last May, the New York Times and the New York Daily News seemed the likeliest candidates to put out an afternoon paper. They had the printing capacity, the know-how, and the urge to expand.

Last week a notice was distributed to the Times staff: "This memorandum is to let you know that the decision we have finally reached is 'no.' The New York Times will not publish an evening newspaper." The News was less explicit but hardly hopeful. "When we have something further to say," said Business Manager Val Palmer, "we will make an announcement."

In his memo, Times Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger explained that "several study groups representing nearly every department had made projections" for the new paper. But the "answers were not encouraging." Sulzberger added that "major talent and time would be diverted from the Times to the new publication. I can tell you that this added a great deal to the unattractiveness of the whole proposal." He also was not eager to tangle with ten aggressive newspaper unions that had struck four times in the past five years and had helped kill five newspapers in that period. They are still resisting automation more relentlessly than any other unions in the U.S. Last week Britain's Lord Thomson, who owns nearly 50 papers in the U.S., admitted that he had been offered the dying WJT as a gift but had turned it down because of such "unreasonable union demands" as promotion by strict seniority in the editorial department.

Survival of the Weak. Some observers felt that neither the Times nor the News had ever had any intention of bringing out a new paper: they simply wanted to scare off anyone who wanted to come into the afternoon field.

The Times, it is true, did produce two dummy papers. The second and more ambitious of the two efforts was called, somewhat imposingly, the New York Forum. A 40-page paper all in one section, it still put considerable emphasis on hard news.

So, despite warnings in recent years that it was too weak to survive, the New York Post inherits the afternoon pro tern--a situation that seems to satisfy the city's department stores, who are content to advertise in the Post as long as they also have the suburban papers to promote their wares. Since the death of the WJT, the Post's circulation has climbed from 400,000 to 700,-000. It has added a few columnists, such as William F. Buckley Jr., Ann Landers and Evans & Novak, plus the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post news service. It has also added an ex tra page or two of news, though its coverage still seems sparse and its typography is fuzzy. The Post recently bought the defunct Journal-American's presses, a move that will enable it to go from 96 pages to 112 and accommodate all the advertising it has fallen heir to.

With a touch of sly wit, undaunted Post Publisher Dorothy Schiff said: "I have great respect for the judgment of the New York Times, and if they have come to the conclusion to stay out of the afternoon, they are probably right." Not that the threat of the Times seemed to frighten her very much. "I really didn't do too much thinking about it. I've seen so many papers come and go that it really doesn't worry me too much. If we survived the merger of those three papers into the World Journal Tribune, nothing worries me too much."

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