The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeilin New York. After tonight's News Summary, we get an update report on the fighting for control of the republic of Georgia, then our major focus is the future of America's newspapers. With readership declining and more papers dying, are newspapers an endangered species? Finally, a report on advertising and sex discrimination. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: The last chapter of America's eight year hostage ordeal in Lebanon came to an end today. The remains of William Buckley were identified and handed over to U.S. officials in Beirut. Buckley was the CIA station chief when he was kidnapped by Muslim terrorists in 1984. He was last seen in 1985 in a video released by his captors. The group called Islamic Jihad said he was killed in retaliation for an Israeli attack against PLO headquarters in Tunisia, but other Western hostages said Buckley died as a result of torture. His skeletal remains were dumped by a roadside yesterday. All American hostages in Lebanon have now been accounted for. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: President Bush went to South Texas today for his annual holiday quail hunting trip. On the way he flew over some of the area hardest hit by severe flooding. Last night, he declared the region a disaster area and approved federal aid for five counties. Mr. Bush had this to stay when he arrived at Chase Naval Air Station near Beeville, Texas.

PRES. BUSH: These funds will help provide shelter, temporary housing and transportation to individuals and families whose lives have been disrupted by this disaster. The funds will also help to recover the cost of damaged personal property and allow the victims of the storms and floods to begin rebuilding their lives. I know that this disaster has been a source of great personal tragedy to many here in Texas, a particularly bitter calamity during this holiday season. And to those who have lost loved ones as a result of this catastrophe, Barbara and I send our deepest sympathies.

MR. LEHRER: People living near the rain swollen Colorado River in Wharton, Texas, have been urged to leave but only 85 of the 1800 in the area reported to shelters. Many said they would remain in their homes as long as possible to guard against looting.

MR. LEHRER: Russian President Yeltsin today issued a decree taking over control of Soviet Central Television & Radio. Tass News Agency said the broadcast service would be headed by Yeger Yakovlev, an architect of Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost or openness. Also today, there was another event reflecting the demise of the Soviet empire. It happened outside United Nations headquarters in New York. The tri-color Russian flag was raised for the first time alongside those from other member states. Meanwhile, fighting continued today in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Rebels attacked KGB headquarters in the capital, Tblisi. We'll have more on that story right after the News Summary. Fighting also intensified in Yugoslavia's civil war today. Serb-led forces pounded the Croatian cities of Karlovats and Osijek with mortar fire. U.N. Envoy Cyrus Vance is due to return to Yugoslavia next week. He's investigating the possibility of sending a U.N. peacekeeping force to the region.

MR. LEHRER: A high ranking Japanese trade official said today his country may ask its automakers to reduce exports to the United States. Last year, about 75 percent of the U.S. trade imbalance with Japan was connected to the auto industry. President Bush has said he will make tough trade demands when he travels to Japan next month. The U.S. Navy will leave Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines by the end of next year. Officials said talks to extend the lease with the Philippine government had broken down. Subic is the largest American base in East Asia. Its closing will mark the end of nearly a century of American military presence there.

MR. MacNeil: A Swedish jetliner carrying 129 passengers and crew crash landed today, injuring at least 42 people. The plane broke into three sections, but most of the passengers were able to walk away from the wreckage. Both engines of the McDonnell-Douglas-built jetliner failed at 2,000 feet on take-off from Stockholm. The pilot skimmed the tops of trees to slow the aircraft before gliding it onto a snow-covered field. The SAS jetliner was bound for Copenhagen, Denmark, and Poland. Sweden's prime minister said the fact that no one died was a Christmas miracle.

MR. LEHRER: Muslim fundamentalists were the big winners in yesterday's first free parliamentary elections in Algeria. They did not gain majority control but could do so in a run-off election in January. The fundamentalist leadership supports better relations with the West but at home they advocate strict Islamic customs. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the war in the republic of Georgia, the American newspaper, and sex discrimination at work. UPDATE - POWER STRUGGLE

MR. LEHRER: The bloody power struggle in the former Soviet republic of Georgia is our lead story tonight. Ian Williams of Independent Television News reports from the capital of Tblisi.

IAN WILLIAMS: When it does come, the firing is intense and indiscriminate. Heavily armed opposition fighters unleash bursts of gun, rocket, and artillery fire towards the parliament building. For six days they've rarely seen their government opponents who are well dug in, conserving their ammunition and replying with snipe fire from the rooftops. The battle had been confined to an area around the government buildings, but today the Georgian KGB headquarters has been taken over by the opposition. Any final access roads to the center have now been blocked with lorries disabled by the opposition fighters. The opposition has taken over a hotel opposite parliament as its headquarters. Here in a room on the third floor we found the opposition leader. The man who was President Gamsakhurdia's prime minister until August said the president had become a dictator, which justified the rebellion.

TENGIS SIGUA, Rebel Leader: [Speaking through Interpreter] Since September, the opposition has been demanding the freeing of the mass media and the release of all political prisoners, but the government didn't even agree to negotiate on these issues and it's this intransigence that has led to the current political crisis.

MR. WILLIAMS: He said he wanted a negotiated settlement but was preparing a final assault.

TENGIS SIGUA: [Speaking through Interpreter] This is a crucial moment. The government's forces are running out of weapons and they're completely surrounded.

MR. WILLIAMS: Inside parliament though government fighters still seem in determined mood, celebrating news of recognition by America of Georgia's independence. Food and ammunition appear to be in good supply and are still being smuggled in. The president, himself, elected by a vast majority eight months ago, refuses to resign and appealed for support.

ZVIAD GAMSAKHURDIA, President of Georgia: Hope and support democratically elected government of Georgia against terroristic gangs, against criminal gangs who are attacking by all means.

MR. WILLIAMS: There appeared to be several hundred fighters in the parliament building, members of the national guard who haven't gone over to the opposition, as well as a number of civilians. Casualties, many of them civilians caught in the cross-fire, continue to arrive at Tblisi's Hospital No. 1. This man was shot in the back by a sniper. Doctors are tense and nervous. Officials still loyal to the President have been asking the identity of the wounded. In a city with such a strong tradition of independence as Tblisi, it hasn't taken long for Moscow to be blamed. The opposition says President Gamsakhurdia's been supplied with modern Russian weapons, while the besieged President claims the whole rebellion has been orchestrated by Moscow, a view that's widely supported on the streets here. It's a putsch, a Russian putsch, according to this man.

WOMAN: This done by Moscow and nothing else. We feel it before and people feeling it too.

MR. WILLIAMS: In fact, the President still retains strong support of the city's population as well as among his traditional power base in the countryside. On squares and corners, groups of people gather and argue passionately about the events of the parliament building. Here a group of opposition supporters confront a peasant woman who's answered the President's call for help from outside the city. Away from the government buildings though, life appears to go on as normal. People continue to go on about their business. The market thrives in what has always been one of the more prosperous and attractive cities in the former Soviet Union. The fighters on the streets here call themselves the opposition, but leaders of many of Georgia's fledgling opposition parties regard this fight as gang warfare between the President and his former cohorts in the national guard and have played no part in the battle.

PROFESSOR NODAR NOTADZE, leader of the Democrat Front: None of these parties has anything to do with the guard which is acting now and none of the parties is motivating the guard to act so. None of these parties is motivating the national guard to act so. The President is as bad as you can make it. I say quite explicitly he's as bad as you can make it, but it is a tragedy when a President who is elected by the people is overthrown by force. It is a precedent. It is a case which may occur many times in the history if it occurs once.

MR. WILLIAMS: Between bouts of fighting, the possibility of negotiations has been raised, but to no avail. Tonight it may have gone beyond that. Both sides are seeking weapons from Red Army soldiers still in the republic. And following the assault on the KGB building today and the release of political prisoners inside, the opposition is claiming members of the KGB and interior ministry have gone over to their side. The danger now is that the fighting will escalate into a far bigger conflict. FOCUS - FINAL EDITION

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, we focus on the future of newspapers. Many businesses took a beating from the economy this year and newspapers were no exception. Nine daily papers stopped publishing in 1991 and a number of others are struggling. Will newspapers regain their ground, or are daily papers in a permanent decline? We'll get the views of five experts, but first, Tom Bearden has this report.

MR. BEARDEN: The huge presses still churn out tens of thousands of copies of the San Diego Tribune each day. But the paper's days are numbered. It's about to be folded into its longtime arch rival, the San Diego Union. Editor Neil Morgan blames the same market forces that killed most afternoon dailies long before his.

NEIL MORGAN, Tribune Editor: This paper was dominant in circulation until 1962. I joined the San Diego Tribune in 1950. We ran the town for 12 years and then as television, we think, began to make an important difference in news habits, we began to recede and we have lingered within ten or fifteen thousand of where we were in 1962 for almost 30 years.

MR. BEARDEN: The merger won't be a long distance affair. The two papers already share the same building. The newsrooms are literally across the hall from each other. That's because they're both owned by the same company, Kopley Newspapers. Kopley has operated the morning Union and the afternoon Tribune separately for many years. The company now thinks consolidation makes more sense in today's marketplace than two competing papers in the same town. The merger will be painful. Executives from both papers have been meeting to evaluate employees, deciding who will stay, who will be offered early retirement, and who will be laid off. Reporters from both papers say it's a tough time to be in the newspaper business.

CHET BARFIELD, Tribune Reporter: There's a lot of trepidation about what's in the future for all of us short-term, long-term, especially people at Tribune. I mean, we're losing the whole newspaper. It's not just looking at your own individual job.

JANE CLIFFORD, Tribune Feature Writer: And it's been a very slow death, I think. It's a feeling of being in limbo, because it started in September and it hasn't resolved and probably won't resolve till the middle of January. So it's a real long time to ponder your future.

MR. BEARDEN: What's the future look like?

MS. CLIFFORD: Bleak, in a word. I don't have to tell you what the market's like, the economy. There aren't jobs for a lot of people and newspaper reporters are perhaps, you know, worse off than others, because so many papers appear to be closing.

MR. BEARDEN: The Tribune's story is not unique. Nine daily papers stopped publishing in 1991. The 10,000 circulation remnant of the old New York Tribune died just as 1991 began, followed in March by the Shreveport, Louisiana Journal. The Union City New Jersey Hudson Dispatch ended in April, the New York sports daily, the National, the Manchester, Connecticut Herald and the Lawton, Oklahoma, Evening Constitution in June. The Baton Rouge, Louisiana State Times and the Little Rock, Arkansas Gazette went down in October, followed by the Dallas Times Herald in early December. Six other papers merged, the Durham, North Carolina Sun into the Durham Herald, Portland's Express with the Press Herald, Ashville, North Carolina's Times with the Citizen, Newport News, Virginia's Times Herald with the Daily Press, Charleston's Post with the News & Courier, and the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Globe Times with the Easton Express. Three other daily papers decided to publish weekly. San Diego Tribune assistant financial editor Michael Kinsman.

MICHAEL KINSMAN, Tribune Asst. Financial Editor: A lot of us got into this business not to make money and on the editorial side of the business you're basically divorced from the business. And you don't even think of it as being a business and here along comes a, you know, a slap of reality and I feel a little foolish that I'm not better prepared for this sort of thing happening, simply because it never entered my mind that it would happen to me.

MR. BEARDEN: But you cover finances.

MR. KINSMAN: Exactly. I should know better. There's no question.

MR. BEARDEN: Jonathan Freedman won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing at the Tribune. Now an author, Freedman says San Diego is losing a great deal more than 150 jobs for reporters and editors.

JONATHAN FREEDMAN, Author: When a newspaper dies, it's like a person dying. It's an irreplaceable identity in the community. I thought of the Tribune as the conscience of San Diego, the community, and the loss of that voice is irreplaceable.

MR. BEARDEN: Freedman says the Tribune spoke with a special voice.

MR. FREEDMAN: It was unpredictable. You never knew what it was going to say and you never knew how it would say it. When the Chinese had a massacre in Tiananmen Square, the Tribune editorial page that day, that afternoon, came out with an editorial that was in Chinese. It's right over here. It was in Chinese. There was a purpose to that. Once it was published, it was faxed into China to show that there was a spirit of communion between the American people and the Chinese people.

MR. BEARDEN: Freedman is worried that the basically conservative Union won't give the same kind of space to more liberal viewpoints that the Tribune once printed.

MR. FREEDMAN: Who's going to speak up for diverse points of view that just are not going to be reflected in one newspaper, no matter how great that newspaper is?

MR. BEARDEN: Union editor Gerald Warren has been named to edit the joint newspaper. He says the new Union Tribune will make a conscious effort to open its pages to diverse viewpoints. But even he would have preferred two papers instead of one.

GERALD WARREN, Union Editor: You can't completely fill the void because there's one less rack on the streets and there's one less newspaper from which to choose.

MR. BEARDEN: And one less goad in your side?

MR. WARREN: Absolutely, absolutely one less goad in our side, one less competitive goad, if you will, but that is something which we have to adjust to.

MR. BEARDEN: The Tribune also proudly displays its Pulitzer Prize for news coverage. Some staff members worry that fewer people at the new paper means less comprehensive coverage in the future.

RUTH McKINNIE, Tribune Reporter: You know, right now each paper has two people down at city hall, each trying to find out, you know, what's going on there. And you narrow that down to two people, you know, right there you've just, you're not going to have the amount of information coming out of there that you have right now.

MR. BEARDEN: The news is less well covered?

MS. McKINNIE: I think so.

CHET BARFIELD, Tribune Reporter: Yeah. And having that hot breath at your heels really keeps you moving. I mean, it really keeps you hustling. I mean, I would like to hope that if I survive the cuts I'm going to be working just as hard and just as aggressively, but the fact is when you have somebody right across the hall that you're trying to stay ahead of, the readers are the ultimate, ultimate winners.

MR. BEARDEN: Management says there will be no falloff in content or competitive spirit, that the new paper will be stronger than the old ones, with a bigger and better staff drawing on resources from a healthier company. But Freedman is concerned some journalists may now be pulling their punches because they're worried about their jobs.

JONATHAN FREEDMAN, Author: The threat to freedom of speech is no longer solely of a tyrannical government. It has to do with the bean counters. It's fear within, fear within the corporate organization, and that fear is as freezing of free speech as a tyrannical government.

MR. BEARDEN: Self-censorship?

MR. FREEDMAN: Self-censorship, economic, self-censorship.

MR. BEARDEN: Many print journalists are wondering whether their craft has a future.

NEIL MORGAN, Tribune Editor: Deep down what bothers me most though is a question that I've begun to hear repeatedly from people in their thirties, twenties, thirties. Why should I buy a newspaper? I've already got more news than I want.

MR. BEARDEN: Statistics say that fewer adults as a percentage of the whole population are reading newspapers, the trend is down.

GERALD WARREN, Union Editor: That's right.

MR. BEARDEN: Is that in any sense a predictor that this is a business that is seeing the last of its good years and is, in essence, a dying industry?

MR. WARREN: I don't buy that. I don't buy that at all. I don't think the newspaper industry is doomed. I think good papers will succeed, but they will be primarily good papers in good markets in the morning field.

MR. BEARDEN: The presses that print the San Diego Tribune will slow to a halt for the last edition early in the new year, after nearly 100 years of service. The Tribune will join the list of 134 once proud papers to pass into history since 1980, a list that is sure to grow longer in the years ahead.

MR. MacNeil: Now we get five views on the future of newspapers. Harrison Salisbury is a former editor and correspondent for the New York Times and the author of many books on the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China. John Seigenthaler is publisher of the Tennessean, a daily newspaper in Nashville owned by the Gannett Company. He was editorial director of USA Today from 1982 to '91 and last year he was president of the American Newspaper Publishers Association. He joins us from Nashville. Chuck Dale is international president of the Newspaper Guild, the 33,000 member union that represents reporters, sales staff, and clerical worker. John Morton is a newspaper analyst at Lynch, Jones & Ryan, an institutional stockbrokerage firm. He also has worked as a reporter and editor for Gannett and for Dow Jones. And Roger Fidler is director of new media development for the Knight-Ridder Group, which owns 29 newspapers. He's currently a fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University, where he's working on a book about media technologies and the future of newspapers. Harrison Salisbury, has this just been a bad year because of the recession, or are there other deeper threats to the future of newspapers?

MR. SALISBURY: Well, I think it's both, Robin. It's been a bad year for all kinds of businesses. And newspapers are, unfortunately, I say unfortunately deliberately, a business. They have to make a profit. If they don't, they're bound to go down. But in the long range, newspapers have been going for a long time. I've been in this business for 60 years, believe it or not, and I mark it by the vanishment of great newspapers. The first to go were the New York World and the Evening World, which were the best papers in the opinion of most people. They vanished about 1931. The next to go about the same time was the New York Sun, a perfectly wonderful newspaper, especially for writing. It went. It was an afternoon paper, probably not too well managed, but a beautiful editorial product. And then we can, I'll skip all the others that went, the World Telegram and all of the newspapers in New York just vanished like flies to a really great paper, the New York Herald Tribune. And I think everyone in the business regards that one in enormous regret. We all regret these great institutions when they go. And they haven't just been in New York. I started out my career in Chicago and the Chicago Daily News was a wonder in its day and it's gone. And I could go on. The list goes on and on and on.

MS. WOODRUFF: The Washington Star.

MR. SALISBURY: What's happening -- the Washington Star -- has been going on for years and years. It is part of a general evolution of technology and of reading and information habits. We all know that a great many people think they're getting the news electronically now, many of them from the morning news which really is hardly even a service, many from the network evening news which is contracting and contracting till it's little more than a news service. Outside of yourself and this wonderful program, there is no really decent all service news electronically. There may be spots here and there. Newspapers remain the main source of information and where they survive, where one paper exists, whether it in three or four before, with good management, and that's very important to an often private rather than chain ownership, they can present a much better newspaper than the readers ever had before. And this has been true in many large places. It's true in New York. I don't think the New York Times has ever been a better paper than it is now. The Chicago Tribune is a wonderful newspaper. The Washington Post is. All of these are outstanding, the Boston Globe, better than the predecessors were. But the mediocre papers are vanishing, except as they persist, as primarily to pervade, to carry advertising, not news. It would be ridiculous to say that a great many of these newspapers --

MR. MacNeil: So you don't see the forces at work driving newspapers out of existence?

MR. SALISBURY: I think it's the bottom line. Frankly, I think that bottom line management drives them out. Bottom line management usually curtails expenditures for good writing and good reporting. I believe that any paper which has good reporting, I don't care whether it's small or large, will survive if they provide something which captures the attention of the readership and God knows newspapers in recent years have done a wonderful job of that, they'll survive. If they don't, they'll go.

MR. MacNeil: Chuck Dale in Washington, is that's all that's happening, is that bad newspapers are being driven out by the market forces?

MR. DALE: No, I think there are a substantial number of other factors at work. For example, I believe that the illiteracy rate in this country is having a real impact on the, on newspapers and their ability to attract readers. I think we're having a very serious problem, we in the newspaper industry, having a very serious problem with what I will simply call the Macnugget news. I think trying to attract people to newspapers with the kind of news that USA Today has put out I think has been a mistake. I think, I agree with Harrison Salisbury. I think that as long as newspapers are doing their comprehensive job of reporting and as long as they don't pay too much attention to the bottom line and they don't end up getting rid of as many reporters, for example, as have been eliminated from this industry in the last year or last eighteen months, I think newspapers are going to continue to exist. As long as people want, are interested in finding out what's going on in the world, they're going to get it from newspapers.

MR. MacNeil: John Seigenthaler, come back to USA Today in a moment, that you were editorial director of for several years, but in the general question, are there forces at work that are driving newspapers out of business, or are good newspapers secure indefinitely?

MR. SEIGENTHALER: Well, you just heard from a fine editor, Neil Morgan, inSan Diego, and many of these newspapers that have gone out of business over this last year have been fine newspapers, good writing, good reporting, solid, in-depth coverage of the news. I think in communities where there are two competing newspapers or two newspapers with one owner, one of those newspapers is right now in jeopardy. But beyond that, the real problem is not the Macnugget news, the real problem is that we have a changing society. There are women who used to sit at home and read the newspaper at their leisure over their coffee that are now in the workplace and don't have time to read. We have young readers that have come up welded to the tube who don't have time and won't take the time to read. And the reason is that the newspaper is no longer meaningful to them and we're covering the news and writing the news and reporting the news without paying any attention to the changing needs of readers. I think if newspapers are going to survive long-term, they're going to have to readjust their sites, they're going to have to put their sites on the reader and try to serve the reader in ways they never have before. And I don't think that the effort by newspapers to do that -- and some people say it's only copying USA Today -- I don't think the effort by editors to do that and as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, I found editors all across the country who were trying to serve the readers better. I don't think that it's fair to suggest that because newspapers are seeking to provide news in different formats, easier to get to, easier to read, that those newspapers are betraying somehow a great tradition. I think they are serving a tradition of getting readers what they need to survive and get along in this changing society.

MR. MacNeil: John Morton, is there a future for newspapers? You're a person who studies them as a business. Is there a continued future for newspapers?

MR. MORTON: Well, yes. I'd like to point out that even though 1991 is shaping up as the worst financial year for the newspaper companies in more than 20 years, through the first nine months of this year they still took in on average 10 cents in profit out of every dollar. So that's not exactly a calamitous condition. Newspapers in the main, despite all you hear about the numbers that have closed, are very profitable. It's a very profitable business. They may not this year be making two or three times more money than most other businesses, but they are making one to two times more than most other businesses. So if they can do that well in the worst recession that they've had in 20 years, it talks to their financial health. Yeah, there's going to be a newspaper business for a long time. We've heard a lot of talk about electronic publishing taking away a newspaper franchise, but so long as the newspapers remain the most cost efficient way to produce a mass amount of information to a mass audience, we're going to have newspapers. They may not be as profitable as they used to be, but they're going to be around. There have been about 150 newspapers shut down in the last 10 years. The great majority of those were the afternoon editions of a morning paper, as in San Diego, a few of 'em were commercially competitive newspapers, a second newspaper, such as recently the Dallas Times Herald. And there's probably going to be a lot more of those closings. But it always leaves behind one very profitable newspaper. And I think that's going to be the pattern of the future too.

MR. MacNeil: Roger Fidler, you're the expert on electronic publishing here, but I just want to ask you before we get to that specifically, what is your view of the future of the newspaper as a thing that's printed on ink? Are we going to stay in this business for a long time?

MR. FIDLER: Well, I think newspapers will be in business for a long time. I think what's important for us though, to begin thinking about a newspaper without a printing press. It's not going to happen overnight, but there is technology emerging. With the next few years, we'll begin to see a device that is being called a flat panel that will combine aspects of video in print and sound, and be able to give people a much richer environment to work in. The vision I see is quite different, however, from what most people see in electronic newspapers. We have to eliminate in our mind first the idea of a personal computer screen. That is not at all what we're looking at. What we're looking at is a technology similar to this. This is a model that shows the technology and by touch you would be able to navigate the paper much like you would turn a page in a newspaper today, be able to go very quickly, still be able to pull out sections, and the question most people ask about this type of technology is, would I still be able to do my crossword puzzle, and in fact, that technology is now available to be able to use a pen, to be able to work a crossword puzzle, or to be able to highlight items on a page. So I do believe there is electronic alternative to the printing press emerging. That doesn't mean it's going to displace the printing press immediately.

MR. MacNeil: Let's come back to the economics of that and how soon that future may arrive a little later. Harrison Salisbury, one answer, as we've already heard referred to, is a lot of newspapers led by USA Today tried to make themselves more like television to make themselves more competitive. What effect is that having on the industry?

MR. SALISBURY: I think it degrades the industry and eliminates many of the essential features that a newspaper serves best. A newspaper is designed to convey information, not little nuggets of information. It's not a bulletin service. If it's a bulletin service, why use television which does it better. I know that John Seigenthaler will violently disagree with me, but I don't see much in USA Today that was new, except adding some color. And a lot of papers all around the country, including the New York Times, which hopes to get into color next year, are adding it, I think because the advertisers think it's a good thing. I don't see this smeary color which bears absolutely no resemblance to the absolutely beautiful color you get in the magazine reproduction, I don't see that attracting people. I don't see a lot of snippity headlines attracting people. I think that what the newspapers have, their franchise, is to give a wonderfully written, detailed story attractively displayed without necessarily -- typographically I think they should be great. Maybe this new electronic thing will work. But I think we've got the most, one of the most efficient devices ever invented in a newspaper, a paper that's full of news.

MR. MacNeil: John Seigenthaler.

MR. SEIGENTHALER: Well, of course I do disagree.

MR. MacNeil: Degrading the history.

MR. SEIGENTHALER: Well, that -- it sounds as if he says television news is degrading the industry and I don't think it is. I think you have a multiplicity of cable. Now you can get in-depth news on this program. You can get it also on C-Span. You get it on CNN all day long. I really think that television news is helpful to the viewer and to suggest that people are not well informed from what they get from television is a mistake, I think. I just think people who are sitting out there, listening to this right now, know that that's not an accurate fact. Now, to go beyond that, i read the New York Times this morning, as I do every morning. I looked on the business section, the front page of that section is filled with what I call Macnuggets, briefs. The Times is a changing newspaper. I remember when it didn't have a Friday weekender. It put that weekender in to serve the people. It has a Tuesday science section, a Monday sports section, all new, a Thursday home section. Every newspaper that's interested in serving readers is going to survive. And I think the Times is successful and viable because it is read and because it is needed. I think USA Today serves 2 million readers, many weekends more than 2 million, every day a million nine, because they find something there they need that serves them. And I think that in a free market economy, a free market society, a free press has an obligation to find different ways to be of service to different groups of readers. And I will tell you that this society is very segmented and very fragmented and its interests are very diverse.

MR. MacNeil: Chuck Dale, what effect is USA Today and that style of newspaper having on the industry, in your view?

MR. DALE: Well, I happen to agree that it's degraded the industry. I happen to think that there are too many newspapers who have looked at the USA and USA today and have decided that they want to imitate that. And I think that that has led to less in the way of comprehensive news reporting. The imitators I think are making a mistake. I noticed that the USA today has started now producing more in-depth news than they were before. So they're getting away from, they're getting away from their old style of reporting, while other newspapers are attempting to imitate them. Very very frankly, I am genuinely concerned about how newspaper managements are dealing with the future by what they're doing today. We have had an enormous number of job cuts in our industry and most of those job cuts are the veterans. They're called buyouts but they're still job losses. And when a newspaper loses as many veterans or when the industry loses as many veterans, veteran reporters, experienced reporters, as we have lost in the last year, it does not auger well for the quality of the reporting in the near future. I believe that the newspapers are going through a shakeout period because of the economy. But I find it very difficult to conceptualize the kind of electronic journalism that we've already heard about on this program. We've heard an awful lot of Buck Roger approaches to what's the future of a newspaper going to be over the years, and none of them have yet materialized. The black and white print, the black and white print, the thing that you can hold in your hand and read on the subway, that's going to be around a long time.

MR. MacNeil: John Morton, as a newspaper analyst, are the editors who are following the lead of USA Today, are they doing good business? Is that a smart thing for them to do?

MR. MORTON: Well, it depends on how they do it. One of the things that USA Today did better than anybody else was doing at the time they started it was organize the news, make it easy for a reader to find things in a newspaper.

MR. MacNeil: User friendly you mean.

MR. MORTON: User friendly, if you will. And that was something that I think most newspapers needed to do. Most newspapers also looked verybad compared with USA Today. I'm not even talking about the content, just the way it looked. It embarrassed them into investing in better printing presses, in better makeup, in better appearing newspapers and higher quality newsprint. Those are all very good things that happened to US newspapers because of USA Today. I think some of them went overboard though in trying to Macnugget the news. The one thing that the daily newspaper can do that no other news medium can do is present a mass amount of information that takes time to read, that takes time to absorb. Nobody else can do that. It's a franchise newspapers have and will always have and as long as they pay attention to that, they're always going to be in business. And I think it's at their peril that they get away from that to a very great extent.

MR. MacNeil: Well, is the USA Today example driving other papers to follow that lead in a smart business sense, or a misguided business sense? What is your view of it?

MR. MORTON: Well, you can look around the country and see about as many different approaches as there are newspapers. I think it's wise to provide capsulized news in some parts of the paper, in some sections of a newspaper as a way of introducing people to what's inside as long as you don't go overboard and make that your national report or your international report. Some newspapers have done that. So there are as many approaches as there are newspapers. I think some have done a much better job of that than others have.

MR. MacNeil: Yeah.

MR. SALISBURY: I'm appalled to realize that we have gotten this far in this discussion without one mention of a newspaper which does all of these things superbly, and that's the Wall Street Journal. They organize, they have in-depth reporting that's easy to read, and it's complete every day. And I think it is a beaming beacon for the whole industry.

MR. MacNeil: And it is able to publish, as the New York Times does now, all over the country.

MR. SALISBURY: And it makes money.

MR. MacNeil: Yeah. And it makes money. John Seigenthaler, are you back?

MR. SEIGENTHALER: I am, indeed.

MR. MacNeil: We lost you just there for a second. What do you say to the, to what Mr. Morton's just been saying about the editors following the USA Today model?

MR. SEIGENTHALER: You know, as I mentioned, I was president of the Society of Editors for a long time. I know many of them. I don't know any who are doing what Roger says they're doing, and that is prostituting their newspapers. As a matter of fact, I find USA Today to be an evolving newspaper, a changing newspaper. There was a story on the front page of the Washington Post just yesterday which pointed out that USA Today is evolving as a newspaper that is concerning itself with in-depth news. And I think if you look at USA Today over the last year, look at its series on banks on the brink, look at its analysis of the insurance industry, look at its coverage of racism in country clubs, look at its coverage of the exploitation of black athletes, just to mention four of many in-depth stories that have appeared in that publication, I think that you'll find that there is a hard edge in the news there. And it is trying to serve readers in both ways, one, providing news in brief, and at the same time provide a hard edge and in-depth news. And I think that newspapers that seek to serve in both ways are newspapers that will survive. There is not a single newspaper that has died over the last year that has suffered because it tried to copy the Roger, the mold that I guess John Morton suggested should not be covered. I find editors seeking ways to reach out to readers with a diverse news report. And I think they are, I think that that's the general trend in this industry and I think it's improving newspapers.

MR. MacNeil: What do you -- do you want to come back on that? Do you want to change your views now? Have you been convinced?

MR. SALISBURY: I haven't been convinced by John, but I do think that it's a good trend that USA Today is joining what I consider the mainstream of journalism, that is to say getting back to the basics, the big stories, in-depth reporting, presenting it in an attractive form. As long as it does that, well, God bless it.

MR. SEIGENTHALER: Well, you know, and as I said, I think the New York Times is doing a great job in seeking to serve readers in different ways and in some segments of that paper providing better organization and more graphics, making the paper more readable. I think all of that helps that paper, which is the greatest paper in the world in my judgment.

MR. MacNeil: John Morton, whether papers get more like television and make themselves more user friendly, what do you say to the person who was quoted by the editor of the dying San Diego Tribune, Neil Morgan, the young people in their twenties and thirties who say, why should I buy a newspaper, I've already got more news than I want? Is newspaper readership going to die out with the aging population?

MR. MORTON: It's been dying out undeniably. Readership has been declining since the advent of television. I'm not sure whether we ought to blame television so much as perhaps our educational system. But it is a problem. And it's one that the industry has tried to address, so far without great success, and I wish I had some sort of a magic formula for it. The problem is that the younger generation is not reading the way it used to. A president of a company once called Spidel Newspapers, Raleigh Milton, used to say newspapers would be in terrible trouble if nobody ever turned 30. Well, unfortunately, these days people turn 30 and they still don't read newspapers the way they used to. It is the No. 1 problem, and I'm not sure there's an easy solution.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Fidler, is that why Knight-Ridder has put you in charge of studying new technologies, because you think or they think that's the way to hook into these younger people, or are you doing it for other reasons?

MR. FIDLER: Well, we do have to be concerned about the Nintendo generation. They have a very different perspective about gathering information and news. They're not as comfortable with a newspaper. They don't have the sense of obligation to read a newspaper every day that older generations have had. They're used to interacting with information. They interact with their friends, they can interact with their computers. They're very comfortable in that environment. Again, this doesn't mean this all changes overnight, but we have to look at that. We have also had other efforts in Boca Raton, where we have tried to stretch the limits of ink on paper printing as far as possible to attract a younger audience. And as far as we know from our research so far, that that's had some very positive results. But much of what they try to do in print at Boca Raton could be done much easier and much more effectively in an electronic environment. I'm not talking again about a personal computer, but technology that has many of the characteristics of ink on paper and yet has the excitement of video and the capability of interacting with the user.

MR. MacNeil: What's the earliest that something like this panel you're talking about could become viable?

MR. FIDLER: Well, the studies I've done so far would indicate the technology that would make this possible would begin to emerge in the next two to three years. But it'll be at least 10 years before we'll start seeing newspapers having the kind of capability with this technology that they have with ink on paper.

MR. MacNeil: John Seigenthaler, you wanted to come in on the younger people not buying newspapers.

MR. SEIGENTHALER: Well, I don't want to make a case for this because I don't think local newspapers should try to turn themselves into little USA Todays. I would not do that in Nashville and editors I know are not doing it around the country, but I would say this. There is something about USA Today that is appealing to younger readers. If you look at the demographics, you know that among all age groups the influx in readership among young readers is interesting and phenomenal and I think it's the organization, I think it's the look, I think it's the use of graphics, and I think it's providing news that they read and get into and out of and get on with their busy lives.

MR. MacNeil: John Morton, does your survey of the markets bear that out? Is USA Today bringing in younger people to read newspapers who don't read other papers?

MR. MORTON: I think that's true. I think John is right that it does attract young people. It is a more attractive newspaper for young people. As a matter of fact, it's one of the reasons why a lot of other newspapers, if not ape its appearance, have taken on some of its appearance.

MR. MacNeil: Harrison Salisbury, you wanted to comment.

MR. SALISBURY: I have one other remark to make about Knight- Ridder because I think this is a very interesting experiment in technology, but they've just had an experiment in the old-fashioned technology in the Philadelphia Enquirer, a remarkable survey started under the Gene Roberts editorship published just before the Pennsylvania election, an 11 part I think it was series on what happened to America, an in-depth study that two of their Pulitzer Prize winning reporters had spent a couple of years in putting together a smashing analysis of the whole country, its economics, the gimmicks in the law, the gimmicks in Wall Street that brought us to the present situation. It was tremendously successful in their market in Philadelphia, and so as word spread by word of mouth, several of hundred thousand reprints about him around the country because it is so much in demand. I think this is the kind of thing which really newspapers can do and nobody else can.

MR. MacNeil: Have to leave it there. Harrison Salisbury, Roger Fidler, John Seigenthaler, Chuck Dale, and John Morton, thank you. FOCUS - HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT?

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight a story about an alleged connection between sexual harassment and advertising. Fred De Sam Lazaro of public station KCTA-Minneapolis-St. Paul reports. [COMMERCIAL]

MR. LAZARO: For a generation of Americans, it's been customary for beer commercials to display more female flesh than beer. [BEER COMMERCIAL]

MR. LAZARO: Until recently, few advertisers argued with the success of these commercials. Stephen Bergerson is an attorney who specializes in advertising law.

STEPHEN BERGERSON, Lawyer: Advertisers tend not to make changes in what they're doing if what they're doing is working. And, apparently, it's worked and we came over time I think to simply accept it as the norm. And we simply made a tacit assumption that boys will be boys. [COMMERCIAL]

MR. LAZARO: And boys, specifically men 21 to 35, are the group beer makers are most concerned with, the biggest consumers. [COMMERCIAL]

MR. LAZARO: But do commercials like this give men subtle messages, besides the central one, urging them to buy beer.

BEER COMMERCIAL ANNOUNCER: Milwaukee Lite, it doesn't get any better than this. [bikini clad girls dancing for men]

MR. LAZARO: A group of female employees at the Stroh Company, which brews Old Milwaukee, contends there is another message in such ads, that women are playthings to be enjoyed like lobster or beer.

FEMALE EMPLOYEE: I turn on the TV and on come Stroh's ad, including the Swedish bikini team. I get angry that Stroh is promoting more sexual harassment within the workplace, my workplace.

JEAN KEOPPLE, Stroh Employee: That area that I work in has been referred to as "Pussyville" because there are several women machine operators. One man calls himself the "Mayor of Pussyville."

MR. LAZARO: Jean Keopple and four female colleagues are taking their complaint to court. They say by demeaning women in its advertising, the Stroh Company fosters a work environment hostile to women employees.

JEAN KEOPPLE: I'd have a spray grip sprayed on my tools which is a sticky substance that you use that we have at work. I had pornographic pictures left on my tool box when they got on to the fact that I wasn't real pleased about the Stroh ads, in particular, being up in my work area upstairs, they went so far as to tape them over the mirror so they were very sure that I would, you know, that that was there for me. So I repeatedly went to my foreman, repeatedly went to management. I got a lot of you're overreacting, a lot of that kind of feedback.

MR. LAZARO: Keopple's attorneys reacted by seeking a remedy well beyond what's usually asked for in such cases. In addition to monetary damages, lawyer Lori Peterson says her clients want Stroh's to pull the Bikini Team and similar ads out of circulation.

LORI PETERSON, Plaintiff's Lawyer: The advertisements are explicitly sexist and it's, it gives a message to male employees that the top of the company views women as idiots and as body parts. And how can you expect male employees in that company to treat women any differently?

MR. LAZARO: The Stroh Brewing Company declined our invitation to talk about the case on camera. In written statements, the company says it takes sexual harassment very seriously and has even fired workers found to engage in it. The company, in fact, did offer to settle with the St. Paul plaintiffs, but would not meet their demand that it change its advertising campaign. The Stroh Company has an ally in Matthew Stark, president of Minnesota's Civil Liberties Union.

MATTHEW STARK, Minnesota Civil Liberties Union: I might very well agree with their conclusion, but not the remedy.

MR. LAZARO: Stark says the plaintiff's claim of sexual harassment may well be legitimate, but he says so is Stroh's First Amendment right to broadcast or publish its ads.

COMMERCIAL SPOKESMAN: And when the Swedish Bikini Team came downstream, it got a little better.

MR. LAZARO: Stark says the commercials may influence the behavior of male employees at Stroh, but so do many other factors.

MR. STARK: The likelihood, as far as I am concerned, is very great that these men read the Bible and the Bible is predicated on certain assumptions of origins. And Eve came from a rib of Adam. Women were created after men and the Bible is complete with subservient roles of women. And this starts a value system in the minds of little boys, andthen adolescent men, and then older men that women are not only different but they're different negative. And I think then are we then going to say that the Bible may not be distributed.

MR. LAZARO: Plaintiff attorneys claim the First Amendment is not an issue.

ERIC SATRE, Plaintiffs's Lawyer: It's important to keep in mind too that you're dealing with a specific context in this case.

MR. LAZARO: This case, they insist, does not seek to ban all sexist advertising, only Stroh's. The Stroh ads make it difficult for women employees, the lawyers say, and they're evidence of the brewer's insensitivity to its female workers.

MR. SATRE: The specific context is a company that's been put on notice of what's going on in a plant and after they've gotten the notice and after they've gotten notice of how dreadful it is, then they decide to continue to promote these ads. There's got to be prompt remedial action. And what we're saying is that in this case for them to do something effective to clean up that workplace, they may have to take off that commercial, they may have to stop that advertiser.

COMMERCIAL ANNOUNCER: And when the Swedish Bikini Team came surfing by, it got a little better.

MR. LAZARO: But Civil Libertarians say getting a court to stop Stroh's commercials would amount to censorship. As a precedent, Stark says, it would have a chilling effect on all advertisers.

MR. STARK: And as soon as that occurs, all ads are going to be phased down, and the next thing is going to be going after the TV programs, themselves.

MR. LAZARO: Ominous as that prospect would be for advertisers, Stephen Bergerson hopes the Stroh case will shake up the ad business. He says the industry lost a lot of credibility in recent years.

STEPHEN BERGERSON, Lawyer: In the eighties, we saw the advent of advertorials, infomercials, dirty political advertising, increasingly questionable claims about food, environmentally friendly products, liquor advertising, tobacco advertising, advertising of considerable controversy for a lot of controversial products, and just an increasingly long list of questionable promotional and advertising practices that I think has simply pushed advertising's popularity to unprecedented depths.

MR. LAZARO: Attorney Peterson says it's time the Bikini Team goes the way of Frito Bandito and Little Black Sambo.

LORI PETERSON, Plaintiff's Lawyer: They would not have an advertisement and should not where you'd have black men being dropped in by plane or parachute onto a beach serving white men beer, tap dancing and shining shoes, made to look like fools, with exaggerated big lips and big nostrils. They wouldn't get away with that. They wouldn't even dare try it. And yet, they continually do this to women.

MR. LAZARO: A Minnesota court will determine if political and market pressures should dictate whether Stroh changes its ads, or whether it's necessary in some cases for a court to impose changes. And regardless of whether the ads were a cause, the plaintiffs will be able to collect monetary damages if their allegations of harassment are found credible. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Friday, the body of former CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley was identified by medical experts in Beirut. His remains were left by a roadside yesterday. He was the last American hostage unaccounted for in Lebanon. Russian President Boris Yeltsin took control of the former Soviet Union's radio and television facilities and fighting continued in the republic of Georgia. Rebels attacked the secret police headquarters and released several political prisoners. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour tonight. We'll be back Monday night with an update on the troubled economy. I'm Robert MacNeil. Thank you. Good night.