Showdown in New York

The scope and quality of New York Times coverage give the impression that the paper is more of a public-service institution than a mercantile enterprise. But Times executives have been forcefully reminded that they are running a business by recurrent evidence that business is not as good as it used to be. Now, on top of the cost pressures that beset many metropolitan dailies, the Times and the other New York City papers face crucial negotiations with 13 unions whose contracts expire March 30. A strike of any duration could be cruelly damaging.

The central issue in the bargaining will be automation, particularly in the composing room. "We have to have it," insists Times Publisher Arthur Ochs ("Punch") Sulzberger. While many papers elsewhere have clung to life and profits by modernizing technical operations, Bertram Powers, president of Typographical Union No. 6, has forced the New York dailies to retain archaic machinery and procedures. Automation would allow the Times, for one thing, to phase out Linotype machines (a 19th century invention) and install computers that can set type directly from edited copy. Such moves have been anathema to the printers in the past. Ten years ago Powers was the key figure in a disastrous four-month strike. Now he says that he is willing to discuss automation.

Poor Showing. Another promising sign is that Powers so far has put a damper on strike talk. But negotiations began only last week with two of the unions and bargaining is yet to start with the others. Powers observes that it is "most unusual" to wait until the deadline is so close. Before the last contract three years ago, talks had been going on for six months. From the management side have come hints that a strike would be preferable to a settlement like the one in 1970, which included large wage increases* and no automation concessions. Says Powers: "Some people--on both sides--expect the impossible."

The Times badly needs some production economies. Though earnings for the entire company increased in 1972, the advance resulted entirely from subsidiary operations such as the prosperous supermarket magazine Family Circle. Pershare earnings of the newspaper itself declined 2-c-, to 54-c-. Daily circulation increased only 9,900 to 851,000, which is 174,900 below the record high of November 1968. Sunday sales went up only 1,500, to 1,453,000, or 150,500 below the peak figure. Advertising linage grew by 7.2%, but nearly half this increase was in cut-rate suburban editions. Overall, the showing was poor compared with the recovery made by most publishers from the mediocre showing in 1971.

No Budget. In a somber December message to employees--the second such Yuletide memo in two years--Sulzberger outlined the paper's major problems. The exodus of middle-class families to the suburbs continues to demand an expensive transition from newsstand to home-delivery service. In town, the number of newsstands has dropped, from 10,632 ten years ago to 8,052 today. If the Times is to reach an ever more widely scattered readership, satellite printing plants must eventually be established. Competition from expanding suburban papers has also hurt. Newsday on Long Island, for instance, recently entered the Sunday field. National magazines offer metropolitan advertising editions at competitive rates, and broadcasting continues to vie for advertising.

The Sulzberger memo also acknowledged, but did not spell out, problems "of our own making." For decades the Times was run like a cozy family affair. The opportunity to acquire a TV station was ignored 25 years ago. Staff was allowed to expand with little concern for the cost. Says Punch Sulzberger: "When I first came here , there was no budget." Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Punch's father, would share profit-and-loss figures with only three other top executives because, as his son says, "It was no one else's business." According to Sulzberger, then-Managing Editor Turner Catledge "would simply spend money until my father told him to hold back a little on hiring or other expenses."

Toothless Drift. Such quaint practices were doomed in 1968, when the Times offered a sizable block of shares to the public. Investors were pleased by record profits in 1969, but the costly 1970 labor settlement and declining earnings provoked much criticism of the company's management. Sulzberger candidly admits that "we were drifting, but we really had not, as a management team, put any teeth into doing anything about it."

Early last year, in an unusual move, Sulzberger and a hand-picked group of younger Times executives attended an American Management Association course in team planning. After a week of twelve-hour sessions, Sulzberger named four new senior vice presidents and told them to put their crash training into immediate practice. Cost cutting and diversification have become the dominant motifs. Says James C. Goodale, 39, one of the new executives: "The fact of the matter is, we're running the company."

The Times will now undoubtedly strike a more aggressive business posture. Sulzberger says management's first "fiveyear plan" will be presented to the company's board this spring. The Times now owns ten daily or weekly papers in Florida and is looking for ways to acquire more diversified holdings.

Some employees worry, naturally enough, that tighter cost control may inhibit the Times's news operation and eliminate jobs. An informal four-year hiring freeze has already cut 28 people from the paper's editorial staff, reducing the number to 500. There have been a number of other economies as well.

Managing Editor A.M. Rosenthal points with pride to the Times's comprehensive coverage: "The Times takes really the whole world as its area. We can't say we'll give up covering the country and concentrate on New York or Washington." No one has threatened such a drastic move but, warns Goodale, "The news department has got to meet its budget too." Lest they be identified as fat rather than sinew, Times newsmen are at pains these days to show that they are busy. High-priced reporters do some of the fetching once left to lowly copy boys; one wit describes the news room atmosphere now as "like Europe in the summer of 1914." In the easygoing past, at least one bridge game was always in progress in the city room. Says Rosenthal: "Those days have been gone for a long time."

* Printers won pay boosts of 15% the first year and 11% in each of the next two. amounting to a top weekly salary of $285.78.

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