STAFF REPORT
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Jensen in Chicago Daily News
Blackout journalism
The symptoms of a city without newspapers have come to follow classic pattern. One day the newspapers are there, carrying unobtrusive stories on the approach of a strike deadline; the next day they are gone. Into what has come to be known as the "gap" flow improvised news-bearing devices: sheets of bulletins, radio and television broadcasts, and imported or expanded neighborhood newspapers. Sooner or later, an interim press emerges, sponsored by a union, a corporation, or somebody else burning to publish; invariably, such papers are the mere reminders of newspapers. Meanwhile, within journalism, a stream of debate builds—the publishers' periodicals damning unions, union papers needling the publishers; promotional branches of the several media quarreling over the effects. Inevitably, too, come researchers from journalism schools to tell what it was all about. One day, there is a settlement; the papers return.
In its recent blackout, New York—like Seattle, Cleveland (twice), Minneapolis (twice), Dayton, St. Paul, Detroit, Boston, Pittsburgh, and a score of smaller cities—passed through these phases, for the third time. But New York's newspaperless period had special qualities: It set dismal records—more papers closed (eight and a half); most individual issues not printed (nearly 700 million); greatest number of newspaper union members not working (nearly 18,000); greatest claims of financial losses (ranging from $190,000,000 to more than $300,000,000) .
More important were other special circumstances: The closed papers included the country's largest, two others with national reputations, and three that were keystones of major national chains. The potential resources for filling the gap, too, were impressive — seven television stations and thirty-eight radio stations, three of the radio-television combinations being home-base operations of major networks. There was also a large neighborhood and foreign-language press, part of which had tried expansion during the previous blackout in 1958. Finally, New York had businesses capable of relocating, if they so desired, more than a million dollars worth of newspaper advertising a day.
In these pages, the Review presents material designed to offer some of the basic data for understanding the New York strike:
- A report by the Review staff, concentrated on recording (1) the extent of the interim news devices; (2) the tenor of the national debate on the strike; and (3) the immediately perceptible effects of the strike on the established papers.
- A complete reproduction of the report on the strike negotiations by A. H. Raskin of The New York Times—a unique document showing how and why the strike began and lasted.
- A report by Clayton Knowles and Richard P. Hunt on the effects of the strike on public policy.
The text of the Review's report was written by the Review's managing editor, James Boylan, aided by special memoranda written for the Review by Wayren Berry and Judith Crist of the New York Herald Tribune and Richard P. Hunt, Samuel Kaplan, and Clayton Knowles of The New York Times. The Review alone is responsible for the statements in the report.
