Fallen Star

A death in Minneapolis

When news executives speculated of late about which troubled big-city dailies would fail first, the Minneapolis Star did not top many lists. Although circulation had slipped sharply, from more than 300,000 in the 1950s to about 170,000, the afternoon Star was still making a profit. Indeed, it will still be in the black next Monday when it is folded into its sister paper, the morning Tribune (circ. 235,000). Explained Donald Dwight, publisher of both newspapers: "You don't have to be in an absolute loss position to have economic problems."

The demise of the Star signaled the failure of two widely noted experiments by its editor since 1978, Stephen Isaacs, 44, a longtime Washington Post staffer. Isaacs' "newsroom democracy" relied on committees of editorial employees to examine everything from working conditions to the basic personality of the paper. With nudging from Isaacs, the committees then decided that the Star should drop its emphasis on hard news in favor of a magazine-style format, with lots of light, pictorial features and long interpretive reports on issues such as the labor movement in the auto industry. To critics who wanted more traditional "news," Isaacs had a standard retort: "Who says it's a newspaper?" Readers, it seemed, asked the same question, and not rhetorically. The Star, which held a small circulation lead over the Tribune when Isaacs came, was 65,000 behind when it ceased operations.

To some extent, the 62-year-old Star failed simply because it was an afternoon newspaper at a time when strength among big-city newspapers has shifted to mornings--partly as a result of competition from TV news, partly in reflection of changing work hours and styles of living. The merged Star and Tribune will apparently be an expanded version of the more traditional morning paper, and will be run by Tribune Editor Charles Bailey. The new product will preserve the Star name and some of its arts and neighborhood features, as a lure to its former readers, and will maintain a limited afternoon presence, with a press run of 30,000 to 40,000 copies for newsstand sale. Some 86 employees, 51 from the editorial staffs, will be let go by the two papers. The company softened the blow for those dismissed with severance pay of at least 26 weeks. Isaacs, who was "traveling" last week, left behind a front-page story about trying to publish a newspaper "that everybody in town would just have to read." He added: "That we didn't succeed is obvious.''

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