Crisis of the American Newspaper

Oh Hey frommy fad Julia Oh The following program is from NET the national educational television network I'm speaking to you from the city room of the New York Journal American the New York flagship of the Hearst newspapers

The name Hearst of course is a name rich with the tradition and romance of the American newspaper business and one out to add I suppose with controversy too in the name journal American journal hyphen American Symbolize something that is going on in the newspaper business all over the country now There is one newspaper where there used to be two and I imagine that that is a situation which most of those looking at this program We'll find going on in their own home town now this particular city room this evening This is an afternoon newspaper is relatively quiet the desk are empty the typewriters are still in the background perhaps you can hear the news tickers Chattering or perhaps a phone ringing because the flow of news into a newspaper never ceases The last edition is gone to press and the papers are now on the delivery trucks going out to the newsstands

And more importantly perhaps in terms of the subject of this program going to the bus terminals and the railroad station Because many of the readers of the metropolitan press in this day and age no longer live in the central city But go home every night to the to the suburbs and somehow or other the newspapers have to learn how to follow them there That's one of the problems that we'll be talking about tonight on this program To discuss all of these questions and to discuss the whole problem of the growing crisis perhaps in the American press We have with us tonight a distinguished panel of experts many of them with a broad and varied experience in the whole field of journalism At my extreme left Our first panelist is the assistant to the editor of the editorial page of the New York Times Mr. A. H. Raskin Mr. Raskin himself before he erodes to such lofty heights had a distinguished record as a labor report Which won him much national renown at his left is Mr. Ben Bagdickian who began his newspaper career on the Providence Journal

And lately he has sort of fled the newspaper business to become a magazine writer where he is one of the contributing writers to the Saturday evening post Next to him is Louis Lyons former curator of the Neiman Fellows at Harvard University And as the expression goes he used to be a newspaper man himself too and next to him at my extreme right is Mr. Frank Kniff A distinguished correspondent in his own right and national editor of the Hurst newspapers And Mr. Kniff seeing that you represent our host here in the city room of the New York Journal American tonight Perhaps you are the best one to lead off on this question of the present in the future of the American newspaper What do you think each one may be? Well I think with this distinguished copy desk we would have an excellent future all around And I want to welcome everyone here as you have done to our city room

I started here some 30 years ago and I believe the title of this show is Crisis in the Newspaper Business Now I think perhaps those words are a little strong I know this is an industry to be set with problems, very strenuous, very serious problems I think we could even be at a crossroads in the newspaper industry throughout the nation at this time But at the same time I have every hope and every belief that the newspapers will remain strong and vibrant voices in the councils of the city, the nation, and indeed the world And I think that these problems with understanding and the degree of intelligence that will be sorely needed can be put on the road to solution We would be, indeed, would be very, we would have our head in the sand all of us if we ignore the fact that the newspapers have very formidable problems And that there must be new solutions, not the old ones, to some of these problems

But I do look forward hopefully to remaining very to the newspaper industry as a whole Remaining very strong and very important There's nothing that nothing on the horizon that I can see to proud that rather optimist to do for Mr. Lines, do you share that optimism? Let's take the question perhaps of television and newspapers, a lot of people talk about whether both of them can survive And if they are to survive and competition with one another what's the proper role for each Well, I think both in flux and newspapers have been in crisis at least my people have said so for a great many years Certainly television has presented the newspapers a real problem, they get the first flush of the news bulletin The newspaper coming out later has to do something more or different, I think newspapers have tended to adjust to that quite effectively And giving us news in more depth, interpretive reporting as they call it I think that from the consumer point of view, reader, you would hope that television would provide or begin to fill some of the gap in competition that newspaper mergers have been squeezing out

But I think we can't expect television to do that until it freezes out from a complete control of advertising and not only control but the determination of its programs That you wouldn't expect the newspaper to have to wait until the department store decided that it's cancer and editorial fades before they had one It seems to me that television can't yet be considered a real competitor I assume it will become one and you then have a greater diversity in journalism, mergers have squeezed out a lot of the diversity of kinds of newspapers We used to have, but I think people are going to go on reading, they certainly are going to continue to need information and more of it as our world gets more complicated And it's hard for me to imagine a time when I wouldn't look forward to a morning newspaper no matter how much the evening I spent with television Well, here we have two votes from the optimists, maybe Mr. Bagdickian, do you want to join the optimists about the future of the American newspaper? I don't think I want to commit myself yet. I'm an optimist in the sense that I think there's no question that the newspaper has a unique function which no other media can fill

Not only because it's daily printed news but because it's rooted in its own city and there really isn't any media that can compete with it Television can't give this kind of local news, papers from outside, magazines from outside the city can't give it a paper that covers its own community comprehensively Can't be beaten by any other media, so that in this sense it has a monopoly in its field and it has great strength this way I think it would be foolish to ignore the fact that the American audience I think is a different audience than it was It's better educated, it's more politically involved and without romanticizing the average reader I think there's no question that they're looking for something that newspapers aren't giving on the whole There's greater book readership, news magazine readership, national publication readership

And I think if you look at the cities around the country that have some substantial circulation of such publications The New York Times, the news magazines and so forth, you will find that in general with some exceptions The newspaper towns that are served by papers that give good, serious news and commentary have the lowest ratio of outside publications being sold And the towns that have papers with the poorest service of this kind of time have the largest sales of Time Magazine, Newsweek, New York Times and so forth So that I think I'm a pessimist about the direction in which this is going But I'm an optimist and the potential is there and the inherent strength in the institution if it will just be freed and exploited Now if I follow you, you're saying that the localness of a newspaper gives it its unique position in the first place And that perhaps one of its weaknesses in the areas of news other than covering the local scene The gentleman next to you, of course, from the New York Times which in many respects is a national newspaper

Might perhaps see the role and opportunity of newspapers in a different light, what do you say to that? Well, Ken, it's always possible for all of us on the time to get awfully smug about how good we are and how inferior everybody else is I don't feel that at all I do think that the real problem is the one that Ben Bagdickian was talking about This is a period of enormous change If everything is changing, the question is whether the newspapers are changing enough in their conception of function I don't see the problem really as one of competition in terms of TV taking away our readers or our advertisers In terms of the news magazines getting better and having more readers, that's fine Better books, more people reading books, we are going to have a much better educated population We've already got a better educated population and we know we're nowhere near where we're going to go in that direction There will be an enormous need for the newspaper and the newspaper is a distinctive medium of information

It gives you, or at least has a potentiality, for giving you a real window on the world that no other medium can approach No matter the immediacy of television, of course, is a real factor But in terms of an understanding of what's going on in the world, the newspaper is an ideal instrument provided it utilizes its function well If the criterion is essentially one of making papers more readable by being more amusing, entertainment, I think that that really would be the doom of the newspaper The newspaper doesn't have to be dull to be doing its job, of course, quite the reverse The newspapers can be much more interesting, much more enterprising in their presentation of information But we are still, none of us doing anything like the job of explaining to the American people what goes on in their own community In the nation's capital and in the world and in all the facets of life

Just a limitless capacity, it's an enormous challenge and we're not meeting it at it Well, let's talk a little bit about the subject of change, gentlemen, if you will I'd voice some agreement with both of those last remarks and I think many papers are needing to confront these problems in different ways Now, for instance, we've done it in the Hearst, which is a chain operation By opening our columns to as wide a variety of columnists as we can So if they surprise a lot of people to know, we have Wal-Elipman in three cities Joe Al-Sopters in several, Doris, Police, Scenaric, Severide And the New York Times, the excellent staff, I don't mind if you plug the New York Times of A Because we have you in three cities, we are the New York Times outlet in Los Angeles, which is a huge market And Seattle and Albany, in fact, you'd be in Samoa if we could get you And we have the Harold Tobune in Baltimore and San Francisco

But I sometimes say, when I go to Washington, I say, there's nobody here in this city, isn't working for us somewhere And I have a little fun with Scotty Reston by sending these nice double columns Make up with nice ten-pointed columns, and I say, if I own your paper for that, you like this, it's so readable But the New York Times, on the other hand, has shown an awareness, it seems to me, we all study each other in this town Of the wide spectrum of human interest, the expanded coverage of women's rooms that you have, your expanded sports coverage Your nightclub, I hate to put this plug in too big because in this town they may all run over there All the advertisers are not there already, but the New York Times has shown a great awareness In the last 20 years, I'd say, picture coverage All the things that, well, if I may say, so that we have the techniques that we have had for years, the entertainment world has been enlarged And I say, when we have to worry about women's coverage and the sports, the general-american, we, the times we think sometimes is moving into our domain

But we are making it consciously not guilty to that We are trying to meet the challenge in many cities by using the excellent services of the times in the cities I mentioned And Abe is our labor expert, are you saying that a good newspaper doesn't have to be dull? And an entertaining newspaper doesn't have to be meaningless No, well news has never dulled, believe me, it isn't, it's the most lively reading there is And I think the whole challenge of life and of a city like this with its manifold, its multiple facets is just a marvelous place to make practically everything in your paper interesting Now maybe some cities are conventional and rather prosaic, but certainly New York isn't I think we have to recognize that we're fortunate in many other people And being in this corner of the country, which I would say, is certainly best served by newspapers from Washington to Boston through New York

There are some pretty arid stretches in the country, middle of the country And what you said about the syndicated columnist, you see to me, is one of the factors we have right to be somewhat optimistic about The development of syndication, particularly syndication of the kind that does spread quality in areas that need it Now I've been very much heartened by the tremendous development of the last angel's time in Washington post syndicate in the last couple of years They almost immediately got a hundred newspaper customers We haven't written this paper there Which meant that all of those papers felt they were getting a better report from Washington than they had before And they have been They have developed a strong Washington staff and foreign bureaus, and this spread through And Bob Sullivan in this paper and the other writers in that service are featured in the journal American You may have just interjected question at this point Now the Los Angeles Times has become in the last year, or the last couple of years, a vastly better paper than it ever was before In the New York Times, in terms of why this happened, I think it might be illuminated

You have a lot to do with making it happen Well I didn't want this to be a house ad type program No, I was thinking more of the thing that all of us view with a certain concern, apprehension Namely the contraction of newspaper sources in these big metropolitan centers Here's Los Angeles with two papers where they used to be four San Francisco now with two, where they used to be three And even though the number of newspapers, it is quite true, has not come down since the war It's been really a quite level number, so there's no basis for alarm overall that the newspapers are disappearing They're not disappearing, but in the big metropolitan centers there is a tendency partly through economic pressures towards contraction Now is this having a stifling effect, or is what happened in Los Angeles might have been? Well it seems to me that it is taking away diversity, the mergers

And that's what I really meant by being encouraged by this excellent syndication to some extent it fills that gap In arid areas, the journalistically, having a good syndicated service come in from outside Does provide some diversity, now it seems to me the experience of the New York Times and the West Pretty well shows that many people had long believed we can't really have a national newspaper in this continental size That you're going to have to continue to depend on the regional and local newspaper So that localities are very much dependent on the quality of newspaper they have, the energy and capacity of the local publisher But this syndication that Mr. Connick mentioned does help somewhat to support it But I might put in an adent if I might bend just before we close this down And I agree it shouldn't be a house clogged all the way, but I can contribute something to Los Angeles because we have this other paper there The Los Angeles Herald Examiner

And there we had there two papers One was had a circulation of 400,000, the second had a circulation of 300,000 Now we have one paper with a circulation daily of 750,000 One paper, the Hurst Presence is still there, and we have a better paper too We have this, we've said before, we have the New York Times service in Los Angeles And we aren't just putting out a better paper than we did before And we're very happy about it, we know that this, we were in knowing that the channelers had a giant We may not have a giant, but we've got a very healthy, rooted in newspaper in Los Angeles now So perhaps that's a better newspaper town now than it was four years ago, I would say But doesn't this whole development throw the spotlight on the remaining papers that before when there were multiple papers in a given town A man could be a doctor in there, a publisher could be narrow, he could be putting out a very special kind of paper And if this wasn't satisfying the community, there would be some temptation for his opposition to make up for the difference

This didn't always work out that way, they frequently competed in devaluing the product But as a matter of fact, with numbers of papers, at least there was an opportunity for diversity Now when we're getting monopoly paper, and while it's true that the number of papers has not changed, what's happened, of course, is the big ones have died and the little ones have come up And it's like oaks in a paved city, they're never going to get as big as the ones that went And so that what you get are more either monopoly towns or monopolies in their own cycle And this, it seems to me, throws a new burden on the publisher, on the copy editor, on the one the gatekeeper in that community Who decides what that community will see And I think that there is greater diversity and quality available, all the supplementary services, which really provide quite a menu, a news menu for the enterprise paper But they're all out there and it depends on the one man in the community who decides how much of that gets up

And we're discovering it seems to me that many owners are really extremely deficient, and this is more important now because there's no competition The competition, the printed competition is gone, and it leaves us with some monopoly gatekeepers for the news And where a community is unlucky and gets an inadequate gatekeeper, well, there's nothing they can do I think this is the kind of crisis we're in, and it seems to me that the long run history of such papers, and where they are inadequate, these are the ones that tend to die, but it may take a long time So Ben, I do think that that problem of selectivity in the news is of course an enormously important one in to pretend that judgment does not go in and necessarily must go into the selection of what you feature, how much, what is the news itself as a matter of judgment Now, of course, in the area of diversity of opinion, or I don't think there's any question that what is happening is diversity in some cases to the point of total confusion that in the effort to avoid any appropriate charge that the newspaper, particularly where it is the only newspaper in the community, is shutting out any descending point of view, anything that differs with its own editorial page that there almost seems to be an effort to get such a hodgepodge of opinion, and I'm law for giving hospitality at every point of view, I just think that in some papers, when you start reading the variety of opinions, you begin to scratch your hands, which side is up, because you are getting things from so many points of view and the facts

which all of these things are predicated are often denied to you, so that you're never able to make an intelligent judgment out of all of this melange opinion, so that it may well be that we're getting into such an undigested area, recognizing that people shouldn't have their thinking done for them, the last thing that ought to be happened, ought to happen but I'm not sure that the end effect of monopoly journalism hasn't been to get such a hospitality to offbeat ideas as to wind up with a confused reader rather than one who's illuminated Well, I wonder if we could come back, you've been talking about syndicated columns and special features that are available in the newspaper, you really feel that this is the prime responsibility of the newspaper uncovering its local area, or is there something else that is the lifeblood, or what do you think? We probably agree, I hope that the prime responsibility of the newspaper is to publish information to inform its readers on their own public affairs and that it's a fair test of a newspaper as to how effectively and reliably it does this, I think that's been a kind of underlying assumption

Well, Ben mentioned that the localness, for example, of a paper is really its essential function in any kind of accountability. Well, that's where it can't depend on. Do you think newspapers are covering local news now, are they living up to this point? Well, I'm sure a lot of them aren't, but a lot of them aren't. I think again, it's a very fair test of a newspaper, another kind of thing that some newspapers do very effectively and regularly, practically automatically, I think is absolutely indispensable. It is to let their readers know how their congressman voted, how their members will legislate to vote it on the essential issue. Some newspapers do that on every major bill, some do it once a week. When a local newspaper pays no attention to how its own congressman voted, doesn't inform its readers, or what the school committee action was this week, it seems to me there it really is missing its function. Also, I think even in being local, it's up to the papers to judge what is in their reader's mind as a point of interest because I believe in this era we're living in,

this nuclear-honded era, I think war or peace or war and peace is the number one news story and everybody's mind regardless of where it emanates from, the latest flair up or the latest trouble spot. And your readers in your hometown and evaluating the choice of papers of news stories who put in and commentaries and interpreters must be based not only on the acts of and on the corner local freeway, but also on what is uppermost or psychically, the most buried in the reader's mind. They are terribly interested, I think, in events in Europe, all over the world in a way that certainly a generation ago nothing had prepared them for. The jets have done a lot, had a lot to do with it. The war itself, which sent back 13 million people with a lasting interest in the world events and with some idea what happens when events get out of control. So, even in a local level, in the smallest town, I think that judgment must be made and they cannot treat their readers with the idea that the only thing they are interested is with the local bridge results.

It's important though they may be, and well read is in me. Well, I don't want to appear to be arguing for strictly, for exclusively local news, I don't. I think obviously, as you say, you can't run a newspaper with daily newspaper with just local news, and I agree with you. But I think that there is a tendency in many cities to run the non-local news because it's the easiest to get. And it's really the hardest thing for a paper. It seems to me to cover its own community well. This is the function it does personally, in a sense. And in a way, this is a reflection of the thing that is the heart of the whole business, which is its staff. And if there is a well-known publisher who used to boast that it could go into a city and run the metropolitan paper with six people on the news staff, well in a sense you can do this. So I mentioned the local reporting as a unique function among all media, but not meaning that that's what the paper ought to be exclusively.

Much as it grieves us all to say it, those monopoly towns we talk about are sometimes an opportunity to put out a good newspaper. I think up in Minneapolis, for instance, I'm handing out a very, very famous newspaper. The polls people have made took advantage of it to make it a fine regional newspaper. We have an Albany, the two papers. We had both the morning and the afternoon. And I wouldn't be surprised if the Albany Times Union winds up as a great regional paper up to the end of the state. And the opportunity of having Albany as an exclusive domain, it hasn't been so happy for our publisher who has been persecuted little. He's only for the grand jury simply because he will print all he can find out about what's going on in Albany. Some places where that wasn't before poked into. And we've had a lot of...

Well, I think you're quite right. The monopoly newspaper has a distinctive opportunity because it has no competition. It can put the news in perspective. It can go holy on professional judgment. It doesn't have to worry about that yellow rag across the street. You know, they don't have to yellow up the news because they can do the best professional job they know how and that's it. And if you have the kind of publisher who wants to do that, like John Coles, in Minneapolis and Barry Bingham and Roy Villal and some other people, then you've got it as Ben was saying, terribly dependent on the kind of publisher you have. Well, we have Jean Robin Albany, who was president of the American Newspaper Publishers Association. He's a very distinguished fellow and a very vibrant personality. And he is endured this because this is his concept and our concept of the way an exclusive domain could be operated. Well, we have both papers going. Could I move away from that question of sole ownership because while that is certainly a crucial area in the quality of the American press, this other question that bothers Ben and that I think maybe is getting a little out of focus is one I'd like to come back to.

Namely, is the primary function of the newspaper really to illuminate its own community about what's going on in that community? And I know Ben doesn't mean to say and yet I'm afraid it emerges as an over assertive element in the total balance. Now, eyes happens to be a national paper which at this moment is concentrating very heavily on trying to do a more meaningful job in the metropolitan area. So my feeling does not stem from any disdain for local news, quite the reverse. It's enormously important. But to say that there is a primary function there for the newspaper that this is the real distinctive thing that the newspaper does, I don't believe that at all. A nature of life today is such that you just cannot compartmentalize the interests of the readers on any basis. Now, the thing of course that is horrible is that there are many, many papers in this country in the smaller communities in which the editor I don't think even knows what's going in the paper.

He's got a teletype set of arrangement which the AP comes in and casts into lead and he picks up the paper and he reads it with the same interest anybody else. Well, that's quite an interesting paper we've got today. AP has done a good job. Well, that kind of default of judgment is of course right. Now, may well be that the AP can do a better job of selection for that particular editor or else he wouldn't be running his paper that way. But there is an enormous function of balance which an intelligent editor or publisher ought to be exercising in terms of his approach to the news. Certainly as Lou says the matter of perspective of understanding is really the key problem today and the problem and as part of the effort which is now I think quite generally accepted as a major challenge to the press of providing some understanding. Understanding not just the who, what, when and where type of journalism some kind of understanding the danger is that in our effort to be helpful to the reader in that respect we may be departing too far from the notion that he has to know basically what happened before he knows what it all means.

Well, I don't want to let them the saying that the Washington editors you remember Washington correspondents on his birthday that they have to do the homework for the nation that people ought to do for themselves and don't say they ought to do it. I think communication is a two way street that the reader has to carry some background in his mind. But I wouldn't worry about that going too far in background and reporting in depth and even having points of judgment. If I read one of your pieces I'm delighted to have your judgment about the steel situation or the newspaper strike. And if I don't agree with it I can skip that and still welcome the complete information I get out of such a story. It seems to me the news of the world world living in gets more complicated all the time. It puts more of a tax on the reporter in the editor you need a group of people all the time and you really come down to the problem which is the publisher's problem of financing the kind of newspaper, the kind of information and explanation the public needs.

Competing with these other newer sometimes more dramatic media and salaries to keep the good people. This is a real tough one. This is a tough being slot man with these distinguished people on the rim. But what I think I'd like to ask you to do we talked a little bit about the local aspects. Maybe we ought to talk about some of these areas that Mr. Raskin has mentioned of news stories. And examine the question of whether newspapers are living up to their responsibilities. Now Ben you've been on the Washington beat. I think everyone who's agreed here that the problem of covering Washington whoever the president might be is not an easy one. Do you think American newspapers are living up to the kind of a job which they ought to do in covering Washington? In Washington? In Washington. I think you have to begin with the assumption that nobody, no organization can ever cover all of Washington adequately. The government is just too big and I mean that literally.

You can't put a reporter on the doorstep of every important agency all the time. But I think Washington illustrates one of the problems that is forcing the business and the channels that it's moving into, a consolidation of chains that Washington as a symbol of the whole news scene is so complicated and so big that if you take, let's say, a thousand individual operators. Most of them duplicating each other. They are going to cluster around the White House. They're going to cluster around the State Department, cluster around the Pentagon and cluster around a few hearings on the Hill. And the majority of the government will go uncovered. And the minute you begin to try to remedy this in some rational way, you end up with a sort of cooperative movement. You then get the advantage of large consolidated bureaus, for example. The chains then have the advantage of being able to take as new-hosted with an advanced bureau. Saying, okay, we'll let the AP and the UPI try to cover the surface of things and we'll get specialists who go behind it and cover for our whole chain.

The individual newspaper probably couldn't afford to do that. And I think to answer your question, I think, no, I don't think Washington has covered adequately, granting that it could never be covered completely. But I do think that it raises a dilemma. I don't know the answer to it. Was that the newspaper's fault, gentlemen, or is it the government's fault? No, it's just in the nature of the animal. I like that form, too, where you have a small staff that can, a small staff of any size that can implement the wire services. But when you were talking, I think there's one issue that should concern editors. And that is, how close are they in contact with their readers? It's part of your statement, too, Ben, where you said the paper comes up, Ben. You say, that's a nice looking paper. Now, are you in touch, are we, as editors, in touch with what the people are really thinking and what their real needs are? I think of this particularly in reference to young people, to youth.

I think there's something going on in this country about youth, and I think much of it is good. Probably it's flexed with some gray spots, and there's something bad, but I'm not quite sure I understand it, and I'm not quite sure that the editors do either. They take one facet of it, rebellion at Berkeley campus, but I think there are so many young people today, and these very distinguished commentators that we've already mentioned that we're happy to have on publications, I wonder sometimes how close they are echoing the concerns of this vastly increased group. The statistics are staggering about the number of young people. This is where the growth is going to come. In circulation, news papers are going to continue to grow. This is where it has to go. I've known some commentators, calmness, good friends of mine, and sometimes they would consider themselves very young, and I really think they're out of touch. They're conditioned by the depression, they're conditioned by the war, they're conditioned by the Cold War,

they're conditioned by the confrontation in Korea, they're conditioned by a whole series of things that are not known very deeply. If you're with somebody who's 35 years old, which is getting along a little, it means there were 15-1 World War II. You remember the slogan at the Berkeley campus, was that nobody over 30 was qualified to give them any advice at all? Well, now, is that a symptom that should be ignored, or is it just that there was a lot of craziness connected with that campus, right? But there's one that where they might just have a thought for all of us. I'm not sure. I don't propose to say, I have the answers, nor have I seen anybody else really, but I think it's something that we have to do. Well, those papers like other institutions have become so institutionalized. I mean, the big ones. It is very often hard to get in through to where there's life or new life. But I have yet to see a newspaper staff where there aren't staffers who, if you turn them loose, can explore these new things, these things of the young people, and give you a live, vital story.

Now, some newspapers do this. And I can't believe that any newspaper hasn't enough people under 35, so that they turn some of these people loose on this kind of story, and gave it serious attention they give to political news. They couldn't... Well, I don't think that's real concern, was not, are we covering youth well enough? But are we getting through the young people in ways that are meaningful to them? And do we have to develop a whole new language, or approach, or philosophy, or what? Well, the question is, maybe things are changing so fast. You know, maybe the new generations are really farther away from austeric cases than the last one was. Yes. And maybe newspapers have to make a conscious effort to make sure they don't lose touch. Nelson pointed down to St. Petersburg as members of his staff to eat in a different restaurant and a different part of town once each week. Partly to get them away from the same orbit that they do all the time. When they come to work...

You say to tell main boys. When they come to work for them, they go out with a circulation salesman for a couple of weeks to kind of see what really is going on in the town. It's one of the liabilities. That's right. And it succeeds partly, I think, because they stay contemporaneous. Now, you know that... It's also the advertising medium, which are very hip and very close to advances. We really like to think they are. They've been terribly influenced by the whole people. Development and the new dances and things like that. And you'll see your advertisements that are appearing in our newspapers that sometimes seem to me to be a little ahead of us in understanding what has happened in this revolutionary youth period. Because the figures, I think right now, 50% of the people in America are under 25. But I'm getting close to you. Of course, you have one device, and that's the letters to the editors column. Now, this has its limits. But those papers that develop it, and I have it open hospitably, very often, have as interesting material in the letters column as in the editorials on the other side of the page. And I notice some of those papers develop this not only on the editorial page.

For instance, the Boston Globes television commenter now wants a week has a bag full of letters for his column. And often from young people and often readers for the Beatles criticizing him. And then the book section will have its own letters. This can be developed and opened up if it's hospitably handled to get a good deal of reaction from readers. I think good you more than we get. I think very often the letters to the editor of the most interesting thing, the paper. Gentlemen, I'm going to interrupt this discussion of crisis in American newspapers for a moment to sort of reintroduce you all to those people who may have come a little late to the program. Gentlemen, my extreme left is Mr. A. H. Raskin of the New York Times, and at his left is Ben Bagdickian, who is a contributing writer to the Saturday evening post. And next to him is Mr. Louis Lyons, former curator of the Neiman Fellows at Harvard, and at my extreme right, Mr. Frank Kniff, national editor of the Hearst newspapers. Now, we've been exploring a bit in wandering a bit as newspaper men will do about some of the problems facing American journalism.

And we've mentioned the question of having responsible publishers on a local level who are willing to go out and do a job. Mr. Kniff has raised the question of having far-seeing editors who recognize the news stories. When they come upon the scene, we've said relatively little about the life blood of a newspaper the working reporter himself. And I'd like to raise the question, and perhaps again we were talking a moment ago about Washington reporting. Do we have on the newspapers that are serving us from Washington Day, the kind of talent that we need? Are they doing the kind of job that needs to be done? And if not, why not? And I was, I was momentarily quite disturbing. He started talking about the life blood of a newspaper. I thought you meant money or advertising, something crude like that. But as long as we're in this fine realm of, do we have the right kind of human talent? That's fine. That's a hopeful sign right there. I think myself, Penn, just to start, that the people who are coming in to newspaper work these days are probably the best qualified people we've ever had.

Now I agree. This may not be good enough, because the challenge is really enormous. They have to be awfully good. But just, whether it's a profession, I don't know. And whether it ought to be. And I don't want to say this at that low pay and hard work. I don't need to derigate school of the journalism, because I feel that they, that they, too, have improved very considerably, notably, preeminently your own. But I think that the, the people who are coming in are not so much professional newspaper men in the sense that they know all the mechanics of journalism. And I don't think that's really the relevant test. They are better people in that they are more competent to understand this fantastically complicated world, which they have to then explain and clarify for their reader. But do their papers give them a chance to do the job? Well, I think so. I'm going to turn to a specialization.

I think it's what you have in mind. Although I think that both the general and specialist, I think one of the great things that some newspapers do is to let these new fellows speak up right outside of the old cliches and conventions, both of what is news and of how to write it. You get much more informal, natural writing. I think there's no calling on paper, though, which don't turn these guys loose. Or put them in a, in a rather conventional channel, who don't see any future in themselves, but developing exactly the kind of potential which I agree they bring, they're all better educated than I think the newspaper men of a generation and the standards have changed, though. The great reporter used to be the fictionalizes. Well, now these kids coming in, and they know economics, they know more history than I have and know when I started, most of the people that I knew as reporters when I started. And I think this is true. They're better qualified, but this means also that they've got higher expectations for themselves. And I think what they're confronted with, in addition to the low pay, which is one thing,

compared to what their potentials are elsewhere. But I don't think that's the important thing. I think the important thing is what they see for themselves as a matter of professional fulfillment. And now they're confronted with, first of all, a competition for them for their talents in other news and news-related organizations. But also, we're finding that the qualities that make for a good reporter, intellectual curiosity, ability to write and communicate well, are also needed in many other fields. New York University is taking them away, corporations taking them away. A lot of governmental units are taking newspaper mail, a lot of the poverty programs locally are using newspaper mail, because they know their communities. They can relate well with politicians and so forth. The news paper mail certainly can understand the poverty, right? Having a especial lean on it, so that I think that the newspaper business is going to have to compete harder than ever to keep this high-grade talent they're getting. Now, one thing is pay. I think pay is considering the professional qualifications which they need. I think it's shameful. I think all newspaper quoted ought to have the generality of them, ought to have their pay jump 40-50%.

In order to get them in that level, which really are they're author-competing media author. And I don't think would be disastrous to the economics of the business. I don't think it represents that. What kind of... What proportion of budgets on your paper goes for the editorial staff? My recollection is... It's 10%. It's 14%. It's 10 or 15%. Don't have it exactly, but it is low. And if you get a highly skilled rewrite man, one who is equal to all the challenges of that very exacting trade, you know very few other industries have as specialized a technique as this for a real good one. I mean, they're like jewels, none of them out of work. They can go to work anywhere because they are so good. And of course, I was a whole rewrite man myself. I certainly would wish those skills would be recognized adequately as they are, let's say, in public relations work, or in any kind of associated media.

Of course, the basic training of the newspaper, the city-room, has always been valued by all allied fields. There's always been a draining off of talent into public relations, into magazine, into Hollywood film writing, into writing speeches for public-man, public information. So this has been accelerated, I'm sure, as Ben says, and this more dramatic television medium is paying much more. I think it really does put a financial pinch on this paper management that they have got to find ways to meet. But we're losing too much talent relatively. Let me tell you one thing about the question of talent, because the young people that I see, of course, what they all want to be, is the Paris correspondent for the New York Times. But they would even settle for going to some of the fascinating new areas of the world, like Africa and Asia. And they come up against a terrible cold factor in newspaper business. They're not very many foreign correspondents these days.

And you all mentioned early on, when I was trying to talk about the localness of news, the terrible importance of world news in our time. Now, what about the newspaper role on the world's scene in the foreign capital? How are we going to solve this problem where there don't seem to be very many reporters? The stories are terribly complicated to cover, and the people with the most talent somehow can't seem to get to where the most important news is. You've been abroad, Mr. Kineff. Now, what do you see there? No, abroad. Every year. And, of course, it's the whole last generation. It's been a great education for a whole school of journalists, news paper, and reporters. And I would like to predict that the ones coming in now, if they stay with it, I think they're going to find it an enormously rewarding field to begin, because what we consider great trips to Europe and trips to Hong Kong have become commonplace, and they are going into a whole new concept of news and its coverage. What is interesting to me a little, I'm trying to, I would like to just raise it,

is there a special greed? Is there a group with a flair for newspaper work? Which do you pick first? I remember in 1934, before I got to New York reading Stanley Walker, he said, yes, he said, in fact, he said, there is a man who is a special breed. He's got the curiosity, the determination, the ability, the skill, the talent, good newspaper writers, I consider it a highly talented people. And then Stanley Walker said, everything else that comes after that is a plus. He said, the better education they got, the better travel they are, the better knowledge and literature, the widest intellectual spectrum they can have, that is a plus, but first must come to the talent and the ability. Now, there's some writers that I admire in New York at the moment, younger types, Jim Breslin, Dick Shap, and I have an idea about their educational background or what they did.

They may be rolled scholars from all I know, and it doesn't matter. I think they're gifts from us. I'm not sure that, I know I am sure one thing that people like this are good newspaper men with every potential for them. Well, Jim Breslin is a good newspaper man, and his paper did send him to Saigon. He got his opportunity. But how many of our other talented people are getting over in these areas where so much of the important news is? Well, I certainly agree with Frank that there is much more of sending people to overseas assignments, and there ever was before. Now, there isn't nearly enough in terms of what the newspapers ought to be doing. And it may be with the development of these syndicates, which have more money to make available, that where a single newspaper found it economically impossible to send more than one man abroad a year or two men or three, that this problem of getting a really much better coverage and much more competitive coverage of all the great capitals and the places the non-capitals where things are happening or beginning to grow.

All of those things are going to... There will be better assignments, more diversified assignments, more interesting assignments and more opportunities for world travel. That's what attracts people. Sure, and they're all in terms of speed of getting there, of ways of getting back information. All of these things are going to change, but there is still going to be the problem of how do you make journalism rewarding? Is indeed, is it true that the special breed part of it is that a guy will stay in this business as I guess all of us feel probably with why we stayed? Because you know, you know, you always find 10 million good reasons why this was the worst field to be in. And yet we all stayed in it, and I don't think if you gave us a start again, and you said, well, all the best you can get here is $100 a week to start, and you can get immediately a job that'll pay you twice that or three times that you won't have to work nearly as hard.

That this would still be where you want to be. But there is a... I think we're overdoing that conception, that the glamour and the challenge and the excitement is going to be sufficient to compensate for the fact that the economic standards really are at the poverty level, even now, with all the work that the newspaper gild and the publishers themselves have done to bring up standards, the standards are still miserable by any competitive criteria. But the interesting thing to me, I agree with you right, that they are low, that both in terms of competition and just the facts of life today and what it takes to live, but it's interesting to me that the papers, which have been the most successful in holding on to good talent, have not always been the ones that paid the highest prices. They've been the ones who have put this talent to use, and they've given them intelligent leadership. There's a paper I know that gets really very bright guys from all over the United States, and pays them shamefully, but they keep them active, and they have intelligent leadership, and they can look forward to doing something very interesting every week or so,

along with the routine. So it seems to me that while granted that it would be something of a problem to pay reporters what they're worth, certainly to compete, that there is also has to be something else. There has to be this using people to their full potential, and it happens, I think we're lucky in the business, that it happens. If we do that, we're fulfilling the function of the newspaper. We don't have to create a kind of phony activity to keep the health. I think the weaknesses of the newspaper are precisely the weaknesses of their usage or their staff. I think that is 100% right. You get as you enable both, saying that the really dedicated fellow going in the journalism, but he wants to feel he's dedicated to something that has a dedication, that there's something in it, that it counts. I think you're quite right in saying, if you can make him feel it does count, it's going to count. If his boss doesn't care, it seems to me that the starch goes right out of the whole step.

How does a paper get a boss of care? Well, they actually do. Well, sometimes they're living in their abilities to execute certain things. I, young fellow like myself, shouldn't talk like an old timer, but I do remember joining the New York, this paper right here, right in this area, and 30 years ago, and every New York paper had just top-like stats. One thing that enabled you to have a lot of fun in your work at that time was the abundance of newsprint. Since I joined, I think it's gone from 36 to 136. We had big papers, they published stories for the share of human interests, sometimes just for the elegant and witty and resourceful writing that they contained. And they could give stories, good plays, and each of them had a competition of world news on the big show. And they didn't have a ship right now.

The truth is that we're chopping down twice as many bars as today, as we did right after the war, and just to keep abreast of all the news from that. We're using 8 billion tons a year. Don't make the Sunday times any bigger. I don't read out my back every Sunday. Well, I think Louis was going to get to a point that was absolutely correct, and that is 30 years ago. The scope of the world was not yet apparent to many of us. And some of the types of stories we've covered, although of renting importance to us at the time, and of some sociological value, certainly the great trials, the Jimmy Heinz trial, the lefty trial, ones that I remember in that era. Or a ship breaker or murder. I covered the Houghton trial with the Houghton. That's right. And they were fascinating stories to work on, they were a lot of fun to work on, and you had to be a very skillful, very skilled technician to do it, and you weren't allowed to make many mistakes or get too many facts wrong.

But the opportunity, the staffs at that time at my memory, were much deeper in personnel, and they all had two or three people who were known as feature writers, and they all had specialization in another category, most of it based on writing and writing skill. And I hope, going back to the opening theme of optimism, I hope this industry will come on to its greatest progress. I see no competition from TV, except it does take the hard flash from you. But if it's interest by every story I know, blackout we had recently, we just one of 300,000 didn't matter if the TV now had saturation coverage of all time. A bulletin provokes interest in the newspapers that file on it, in my opinion. It's amazing to me that they don't take more of it away from me. I think they stimulate interest in papers.

Frank, isn't it a fact that today, on the average, papers have a smaller hard news hall than they used to? Oh, yes, so that works. So that the papers are bigger physically, but they're printing less live news. And so the selection of news and the length of it, here's another thing. We all used to subscribe to the theory that news could be compact, short, and the shorter the better. But now that we have these news flash bulletins from TV, sometimes you have to justify why what's so interesting in this story that you're giving it an A column line, and you must have enough material that TV doesn't have on its programs to justify the play. Well, I don't have the opportunity to report that the tyranny of the deadline exists in all forms of communication. And I think perhaps if we come to any conclusion about the crisis in the newspaper business, it's a conclusion that it can be solved with good reporters, good editors, and forward-looking publishers. I want to thank you all for being on this program, and I want to give our special thanks to the New York Journal of American

and its publisher, Kingsbury Smith, for being our host here on this program tonight. This is Penn Kimball. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening.

This is NET, the National Educational Television Network.