The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: A summary of the news of the day; analysis of the Afghan war's battle of the caves; a report on the financial troubles of newspapers; a look at a family fight over a big computer merger; and a conversation with Billy Collins, the new Poet Laureate of the United States.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Afghan opposition forces launched a three-pronged attack today against the forces of Osama bin Laden. The target was Tora Bora, bin Laden's suspected mountain hideout in eastern Afghanistan. A tribal commander said his men advanced with the help of tanks and U.S. air strikes. He said bin Laden was seen there just five days ago. He's believed to be commanding up to 1,000 foreign fighters. Elsewhere, U.S. Marines set up a new base about 12 miles outside Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan. They used "hunter-killer" teams to block escape routes for any remaining Taliban fighters. The Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, was still at large. In Kabul, marines secured the old U.S. Embassy compound. It had been closed since 1989. President Bush considered today whether to release a videotape of Osama bin Laden. Top administration officials said it proved he was behind the September 11th attacks. On the tape, he reportedly said he expected only the top floors of the World Trade Center Towers to collapse. And he suggested not all the hijackers knew they were on a suicide mission. Late today at a White House holiday event the President said the tape demonstrated again the evil of bin Laden.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: He's so evil that he's willing to send young men to commit suicide while he hides in caves. And while we celebrate peace and lightness, I fully understand in order to make sure peace and lightness exists in the future we must bring him to justice and we will. But for those who see this tape they'll realize that not only is he guilty of incredible murder, he has no conscience and no soul.

JIM LEHRER: The tape was found in a private home in eastern Afghanistan. In Kenya today, police arrested a man believed to have ties to bin Laden and the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. Bin Laden was allegedly the mastermind of the attack in 1998. It killed 219 people. The suspect arrested today is on the FBI's list of 22 most wanted terrorists. The United Nations and Secretary-General Annan today accepted the 100th Nobel Peace Prize. At the ceremony in Oslo, Norway, Annan said it was more critical than ever to unite against poverty, disease, and ethnic hatred.

KOFI ANNAN: We have entered the third millennium through a gate of fire. If today after the horror of 11th, September, we see better and we see fairer, we will realize that humanity is indivisible. New threats make no distinction between races, nations or regions. And new insecurity has entered every mind regardless of wealth or status.

JIM LEHRER: Annan said the UN must look beneath the surface of nations to focus on the plight of individuals. He warned that failure to uphold human dignity can lead to a calamity for entire nations. U.S. Immigration authorities have broken up a human smuggling ring on the Mexican border. Attorney General Ashcroft said today the scheme involved a Los Angeles bus company. It allegedly transported up to 300 illegal Mexican immigrants a day, to locations in six western states. He scheme began in 1996. 32 people were indicted. Soldiers who served in the Gulf War are nearly twice as likely to get Lou Gehrig's Disease as other troops. The Veterans Administration reported that today. It was the first time the government had acknowledged such a link. The nature of that link remained unclear, but the VA said it would immediately offer benefits to those affected. Lou Gehrig's is a fatal neurological disorder. The U.S. Supreme Court today let stand a graduation policy in Florida, in the latest battle over school prayer. It refused to consider whether inspirational messages at commencements are actually prayer. A student-parent group claimed they are, and said the practice was unconstitutional. The Jacksonville-area school district said the messages could be either spiritual or secular. Lower courts have upheld the policy.

FOCUS - CAVE WAR

JIM LEHRER: The war of the caves. Kwame Holman begins.

KWAME HOLMAN: Today's assault on the al-Qaida cave complexes began early this morning with U.S. Air strikes. Anti-Taliban tribal fighters followed with a ground attack, reportedly capturing several caves as they moved forward. The battle zone is a mountain range near Jalalabad in northeastern Afghanistan, near the village of Tora Bora. The mountains include 13,000- foot peaks, and are three hours on foot from the nearest road. At the Pentagon, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the operating theory is that Osama bin Laden is hiding somewhere near Tora Bora.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ: The best indications we have of where he might be tend to point, I would say, almost entirely, but mostly to that area. I can't guarantee there isn't some crank caller right now saying that he's in another country, but we don't have any credible evidence of him being in other parts of Afghanistan or outside of Afghanistan. But the kinds of reports that we're working on are very fragmentary, not very reliable.

REPORTER: Do you think U.S. troops might have to be used to, as you put it, "root" al-Qaida out of these caves and tunnel complexes?

PAUL WOLFOWITZ: Well, U.S. troops are playing a role in supporting the Afghans, who are doing most of this work right now, and we will do what we need to do. Obviously, just in terms of sheer numbers, but for many other reasons, the more we can get local allies to do that job for us, the better.

KWAME HOLMAN: To hit the caves, U.S. warplanes are employing a number of weapons: One type of bomb is capable of burrowing through 20 feet of rock, before detonating. Another is designed to pinpoint a cave entrance and seal it with a blast. The U.S. also is using one of its largest conventional bombs, the Daisycutter. Weighing 15,000 pounds, it explodes just above the ground and incinerates everything within 600 yards. Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem said there are two reasons to use the Daisycutter.

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN STUFFLEBEEM: One is that there is a psychological effect of having a munition of 15,000 pounds of explosive capability that's brought into a very narrowly defined area. This cave complex is literally on the sheer walls of a valley, and therefore, the reverberation effect that goes up in those caves should have some kind of a negative effect. (Laughter) And the other... The other would be just the obvious effect of the high explosive yield. It was... It was at a target, at a cave target, and that cave target should no longer be usable for anybody to get in or out of.

KWAME HOLMAN: Why that specific cave target?

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN STUFFLEBEEM: Well, it was believed that that's where some substantial al-Qaida forces would be, and possibly including senior leadership.

REPORTER: You said "senior leadership." Does that include bin Laden?

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN STUFFLEBEEM: It would certainly-- would hope-- be hopefully so.

REPORTER: Let me just ask you one other question, too, about Tora Bora. We have a correspondent on the ground there who... He says he hears choppers right now. Are there gun ships that are being used? Are there people being ferried in or out?

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN STUFFLEBEEM: Well, our special operating forces are in there. The fact that they may be resupplied for what they need probably is ongoing. The air forces that are being used to support the strikes that are requested by the opposition groups are primarily fixed-wing aircraft and not helicopters, so the attack gunship wouldn't necessarily be there.

KWAME HOLMAN: The cave complexes in northeastern Afghanistan have been used in war fighting for more than a century. The tunnels are substantially man-made. They were upgraded, with help of the U.S., during the 1980s, when the Afghans fought off soviet occupation. Entrances to many of the 40 or so caves are inside the mountain valleys, making access difficult. Some of the many entrances are angled to frustrate head-on attacks; others are wide enough for tanks and trucks. Most caves have holes for ventilation. As this schematic drawing shows, the structures are said to have multiple floors and rooms. Some areas are used for storing general supplies, others to house weapons, others for living quarters. The Pentagon calls its strategy denying al-Qaida its caves.

REPORTER: When you say denying caves, are you talking about collapsing, destroying...

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN STUFFLEBEEM: Entrances to caves.

REPORTER: ...Entrances to caves?

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN STUFFLEBEEM: Correct.

REPORTER: Are these believed to be one- way caves, or is there a doorway in here and then it takes a left and then it comes out somewhere down the way?

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN STUFFLEBEEM: Just about every conceivable type of cave is there: One-way; small caves; large, extensive tunnels with multiple entrances; all of that.

KWAME HOLMAN: Officials also say al-Qaida leaders inside the caves now are far less able to communicate with the outside world.

JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill takes it from there.

GWEN IFILL: For more on the challenges of cave warfare, we turn now to four guests. Jack Shroder is a professor of geography and geology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. In the 1970s, he directed the Atlas of Afghanistan project, which produced detailed maps of the region. Ali Jalali is a former Afghan army colonel who fought against the Soviets in the 1980s. He co-authored the book "The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahadeen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War." He is now the chief of FARSI Service for Voice of America. Frank Anderson is a retired CIA Official who directed the agency's covert operations in the MidEast and South Asia from. He ran the CIA's Afghan program during theSoviet invasion. And Michael Vickers, former CIA and Special Forces officer. He's now director of strategic studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent policy research group.

Professor Shroder, tell us some more about the caves we just saw in Kwame Holman's report. How do we maneuver in or out of them? What kind of stone are they made of?

JACK SHRODER: That particular area of Afghanistan is crystalline rock. It's really tough granite and nice and other tough rocks. The Afghans have been building caves in that area for a very long time. Actually al-Qaida, I think, has at least two bunker complexes, the Tora Bora and another one nearby that I'm not supposed to name, but I suspect he's... If he's got at least two he might even have more than that. They have multiple entrances and exits, multiple air holes, lots of different ways to get away from whoever is coming after you. There are altogether a fairly sophisticated and rather expensive set of bunkers that they've built.

GWEN IFILL: What's a bunker and what's a cave? When we think of caves we think of unfinished walls. We don't think of the sophisticated set-up we saw in that piece.

JACK SHRODER: Yeah, when I call something a bunker, it's got concrete and steel and it's been built for a specific purpose for combat as opposed to just a cave like a mine or a hole in the ground where he could go and hide, something like that. These are pretty sophisticated bunkers. I've seen photographs of them with concrete and steel hardening. So I know that they're fairly strongly built.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Jalali, explain that some more for us. What were these bunkers and caves used for?

ALI JALALI: They were used during the 1980s as bases for Mujahadin who needed them, who needed them to stage operations, to, you know, to protect themselves against air bombardment and also to use them as transfer stations. However, later on, they were improved to become major defensive complexes. During the Afghan war they were not meant to be defense complexes because guerillas prefer to conduct their operations by offensive action.

GWEN IFILL: Who made those improvements and who paid for them?

ALI JALALI: The improvements were gradually in that during the past five years some of the al-Qaida elements and units improved caves in three majors areas in Baktiar province near Java, in Tora Bora area and also another province. These were the three major locations where they based their three, you know, units that they had.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Anderson, what does U.S. Intelligence tell us about where these caves are and how accessible they are to U.S. forces or to opposition forces?

FRANK ANDERSON: The way U.S. Intelligence would gather its understanding of those caves is, in fact, the way that this program has gone. We begin going to someone like Professor Shroder. You'd collect the geographic and basic intelligence that is known publicly. Then we'd go to people like Colonel Jalali and go for the history of those caves as known by people who are out and we can now immediately access. And the third thing you do is what is the classic duty of the clandestine services of the CIA, and that's build relationships with people who are on the ground, who are there now and able and willing to provide intelligence.

GWEN IFILL: Is there any evidence from what you've been able to see watching this operation that that kind of normal intelligence gathering works in this case or is something more extraordinary required?

FRANK ANDERSON: Actually I think the evidence in this case, like this whole war, is very clear that there's been a very successful application of those, let's call it, traditional intelligence collection and relationship-building skills that are applied by the agency and by Special Operations soldiers who use people on the ground to collect intelligence and then, in this case, to then apply that knowledge in operations against the enemy in those caves.

GWEN IFILL: When it comes, Mike Vickers, to applying that knowledge, how does the united states begin to decide what it takes to conduct cave warfare? It's not just being in the air. It's not necessarily just being on the ground. What is it?

MICHAEL VICKERS: It's a combination of both air-ground assault. The air power that the U.S. is using is really doing three things. One, it's doing sort of a pre-emptive denial. That is to close off entrances to certain caves, perhaps trapping al-Qaida fighters inside but also to deny the number of caves that they can use particularly in a confined area. The second thing that it does is force them to disperse into smaller groups or move on the run so that they don't provide a large concentrated target where one strike might kill them. Of course, the third is to actually penetrate those caves as your lead-in clip showed either through television-guided bombs through the entrance or so- called bunker-buster bombs, penetrating through the rock and dirt.

GWEN IFILL: In the end, is that... is using bombs enough or does it have to come down to hand-to-hand combat?

MICHAEL VICKERS: No. It will most likely come down to a major ground assault as we're seeing currently in the Tora Bora or White Mountains area, a large-scale assault by Afghan opposition forces. There's also the Special Forces option although I don't think it would be used here. The British Air Service that did a cave assault in the Kandahar area about a week or two ago.

GWEN IFILL: Professor Shroder, what do you think about that? Is this kind of operation based on your knowledge of how these caves are constructed which can be undertaken from the air or does it require something more complicated than that?

JACK SHRODER: I suspect that we all hope that we can take care of it through the air, but I don't think it's going to work potentially because bin Laden would have known that an air assault would be conducted in certainly ways, and I think those bunkers are built big enough with enough air vents and enough ways to escape that it might not work. And if it doesn't work, that means people have to go in on the ground, into the cave and go underground and fight underground. That's going to be a very tough job. I hope it works. I hope the air assault works but I'm not confident that it's going to work.

GWEN IFILL: There's been some discussion also Professor about gassing out the combatants or smoking them out, literally. Is that practical in this case?

JACK SHRODER: Well, I'm not a military guy, and I don't know that much about gas attacks but there are certainly plenty of different kinds of gas including smoke that could drive people out from underground for sure. And maybe that would be the best way to do it.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Jalali, how about that? What do you think is the best approach in this case?

ALI JALALI: Well, the final outcome of this war is not going to be decided by tactical elements but by strategic and political. That area is now surrounded by hostile forces -- it is an isolated defensive position. So therefore one can wait them out. At the same time once the supply routes are cut off, once the tactical situation is has become such that the defenders are entrapped, then I think they have no other choice but to come out and then the fight... The combat will be conducted in conditions unfavorable to the people who occupy these caves. Instead of attackers going inside the caves I think it is preferable to flush them out and give them battle outside the cave.

GWEN IFILL: So are you suggesting that the caves themselves have to be encircled by other forces in order to stop people from coming out?

ALI JALALI: Yes. I think the time is not on the side of the defenders of caves, nor the attackers are in a hurry to flush them out. So therefore the isolation of the caves, the cut-off of your supply routes is going to eventually force the defenders of the cave to fight in an unfavorable condition, instead of going to fight them cave to cave and from one cave to another.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Anderson, how important is it for the U.S. forces to have some sort of collaboration from local forces or locals who know how these caves are laid out?

FRANK ANDERSON: It's more than important; it's vital. It's the way in which we need... We have and needed to collect intelligence. I believe from observing the conduct of this war, it appears to be our intention that the way we're going to do this is to build those relationships with the locals. They have the interest. They have the understanding. They have the capability to surround those caves, cut them off, starve the inhabitants and eventually, if necessary, go in -- but certainly be available to fight them when they're driven out.

GWEN IFILL: If intelligence has allowed us to find out where the entrances to these caves are, are we sure where all the exits are?

JACK SHRODER: We know where some of them are.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Shroder, go ahead.

JACK SHRODER: We know where some of them are. Actually some Afghans who don't want Osama bin Laden and his people in their country have been sending me photographs over the Internet showing me where some of the entrances and exits are. So for sure some of the Afghans want him out and are showing us where to go and look for him.

GWEN IFILL: Go ahead.

FARNK ANDERSON: This is not a great intelligence challenge. As I had said earlier, there is basic and historical intelligence available. We have some very advanced sensors, both individual and outside that range that can identify almost any unnatural opening in a cliff face or on a mountain. And then we have the current intelligence coming from the people who probably built until recently occupied those caves.

GWEN IFILL: How about the proximity of these caves to the Pakistani border and the porousness of that border and the degree it gives an avenue of escape.

MICHAEL VICKERS: Pakistan has recently taken steps to reinforce its border but it is a porous border. The cave complexes are very close. One concern would be since bin Laden apparently has a fairly large force would be that if he fought a delaying action, if he sacrificed a lot of his troops in holding down the opposition, a small group potentially might get away. There always is that possibility which Secretary Rumsfeld and others have talked about. But I agree with Colonel Jalali, I think time is really running out on these guys.

GWEN IFILL: Let's turn back to Mr. Jalali because I'm very curious about whether you have noticed or whether you know other problems that have faced forces in other areas of the country, let's say land mines and other booby traps, would that also exist inside these caves?

ALI JALALI: Yes I think it's natural. When somebody is defending caves they will use mines, booby traps, to make it difficult for the attacker to go. That's why I'm saying that instead of going directly into that mine area or booby trap area, there are other methods to use. You know, defenders rely on fortifications while an attacker uses maneuvers to outmaneuver or to... To create the situation for the defenders not to impose its will on the attacker but the attacker can impose its will on the defenders if the attacker uses the maneuver and firepower in coordination.

GWEN IFILL: Do you agree with Mr. Anderson that in fact in some ways this is a pretty simple intelligence matter in that we know so much already about what's there and it's just a question of execution?

ALI JALALI: Yes I do believe... Agree with him. I think it is something that the area is surrounded by hostile people to al-Qaida; all people in that area, they want these people out. They have seen what they have done to their country. At the same time, there are people in that area, they know every, every part of that, you know, terrain. So therefore, there is no lack of intelligence about it. But there's one point: If they want to... The part of it is going to get away, it is not the Tora Bora area that it can find a way because the access to Pakistan across the mountains in that area is very difficult especially at this time of the year, which is snow covered. If they want to get away, I think it will be Milawa, not Tora Bora, about 40 or 50 kilometers east of Tora Bora.

GWEN IFILL: Professor Shroder, what do we know now that we didn't know when you were mapping Afghanistan and these caves some 20, 30 years ago. How different is the landscape now?

JACK SHRODER: Well the landscape is not a lot different. It's lost a lot of its trees in the last 20 years but there's still plenty of trees there. For my money, if Osama bin Laden tries to get away, he'll probably go to the south of the Khyber Pass down through Parachinara which is south of the White Mountains. That was a major access route through there. People would go when they didn't want to see any troops at the Khyber Pass, they'll go through Parachinara. I think that's why bin Laden has two sets of bunkers right near the Pakistani border there. That's for my money where he'd try and escape.

GWEN IFILL: Briefly, is that what your understanding is? Does that sound right?

FRANK ANDERSON: There's a little chicken here. Those fortified complexes were built close to the Pakistani border and close to sort of a parrot's beak that extend from Pakistan into Afghanistan largely because they wanted to be close to the border into those lines of supply during the war. Parachinara is an area that might be a little easier for someone to evade Pakistani patrols and other forces, but I frankly think that this is not a great challenge for the Pakistanis or for us to cut off and prevent the escape of al-Qaida from that area.

GWEN IFILL: Okay. Gentlemen, thank you all very much.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: Money problems of the press, the big computer merger dispute, and the new poet laureate of the United States.

FOCUS - PRESSES UNDER PRESSURE

JIM LEHRER: Throughout the country, this has not been a good financial year for newspapers of all sizes and descriptions. Media Correspondent Terence Smith tells the story of Knight Ridder. It made severe cutbacks earlier in the year and, in recent days, said it will also freeze some salaries and cut bonuses of many of its senior employees.

TERENCE SMITH: Newspaper girls and boys have had to pick up the pace since September 11, delivering more papers here in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and around the country. Circulation is up in recent weeks, along with extra editions. As surveys show, readers are reconnecting with their newspapers as a byproduct of the war on terrorism. Tony Ridder is the CEO of Knight Ridder newspapers. Now publicly owned, the business was first bought by his family in 1929.

TONY RIDDER, CEO, Knight Ridder: When there is a disaster, it is a time that newspapers can prove why they're so important to American society.

TERENCE SMITH: But at the same time, newspaper advertising revenues are down-- as much as 10% industry wide, according to Morton Research. Even before the terrorist attacks, newspapers were experiencing the sharpest and most sudden economic downturn in decades. Then, in the wake of September 11, the bottom fell out altogether. Tony Ridder:

TONY RIDDER: We're experiencing a drop in ad revenue that's greater than anything we've experienced since World War II.

TERENCE SMITH: For the month of September, Knight Ridder, the second largest newspaper chain, lost $9 million in advertising revenue. Nonetheless, Ridder says, he is committed to a continuing full court press on this huge story, which is being coordinated by the Washington Bureau. Knight Ridder Washington editor Clark Hoyt explains.

CLARK HOYT, Washington Editor, Knight Ridder: This is a turning point in history. It's probably the largest story that any journalist now working has ever worked on, and it... It's what we do. It's what readers demand of us.

TERENCE SMITH: In the nation's capital, about 40 Knight Ridder news people are cranking out more copy than ever covering America's war on terrorism.

SPOKESMAN: We demand...

TERENCE SMITH: In addition, 11 journalists have been reassigned joining the throngs of media in Central Asia.

SPOKESMAN: Knight Ridder newspapers.

TERENCE SMITH: This expensive wartime infusion of resources stands in stark contrast to the 10% staff reduction that Knight Ridder imposed on its 32 newspapers earlier this year. The belt-tightening came after the company experienced a 12% ad revenue decline from the spring of last year to this year. In the same time period, classified advertising alone was down by 18%. In addition to Knight Ridder, each of the major publicly- traded newspaper companies including Dow Jones, Gannett, New York Times, Belo and Tribune has responded to the tough times with staff reductions from 4% to 10%. Tony Ridder:

TONY RIDDER: This was not about improving the margin, this was trying to protect the margins to the extent we could.

SPOKESPERSON: We have had periods of...

TERENCE SMITH: What's the practical impact of these cuts? To find out, the NewsHour visited the "Grand Forks Herald"--by coincidence, on September 11-- when the newsroom was frantically trying to cope with fast-moving news.

NEWSMAN: Can we get on the base? I'll call back and ask if we can have access.

NEWSMAN: Are they on some kind of...

NEWSMAN: Well, they're in A...

NEWSMAN: They're on, like, ultra- alert, yeah.

NEWSMAN: Yeah.

NEWSMAN: They're not letting people out, I doubt if they're letting anybody in.

TERENCE SMITH: The small staff debated how it would cover the story and whether the paper could afford to put out an extra edition. No paper within Knight Ridder has been cut as deeply-- symbolically and in terms of numbers-- as the "Herald," the sixth smallest paper in the Knight Ridder chain. Editor Mike Jacobs compares the cutbacks to a drought.

MIKE JACOBS, Editor, Grand Forks Herald: I'm a survivor of flood and of drought. And I prefer flood because it's, in some ways, instant and it's gone.

TERENCE SMITH: In 1997, when the red river flooded its banks, all of Grand Forks was under water. The downtown, including the "Herald's" headquarters, burned after it was flooded. But miraculously the "Herald," which has some 33,000 readers today, managed to put out the news every day with the help of its sister paper, the "St. Paul Pioneer Press" in Minnesota. Back in 1997, Jacobs talked about the paper's role.

MIKE JACOBS: Our people are scattered everywhere and there's no... Nothing tangible about Grand Forks anymore except the "Herald."

TERENCE SMITH: The "Grand Forks Herald" not only survived the flooding, it went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage. But that distinction did not inoculate it against the staff cutbacks that have affected newspapers across the country. The "Herald" lost 14% of its editorial staff and now has fewer than 40 reporters and editors to cover a circulation area about the size of New England.

NEWSMAN: Okay, I'll push back.

TERENCE SMITH: To compensate for the staff cuts, editor Jacobs has put his proverbial reporter's hat back on covering county government himself. He says the paper's challenge from the latest layoffs is almost as vexing as that of the flood. As part of Grand Forks' recovery, Knight Ridder rebuilt the "Herald" from the ground up in this state of the art building, contributed to a new community arts center and recently donated $25,000 to replant trees uprooted by a windstorm.

MIKE JACOBS: There's an irony, I think, that that the help in that crisis came from Knight Ridder, which is the source really of the current crisis.

TERENCE SMITH: Last June, employees took to the streets outside their office to protest the staff cuts. Since the flood of '97, the newsroom has lost about a dozen people through layoffs, voluntary buyouts and attrition. But CEO Ridder defends these measures as necessary and says quality shouldn't be impeded.

TONY RIDDER: You add staff in the newsrooms and people don't say, "God, isn't the quality improved in this newspaper because we added ten people." But you take three people away and people are saying "oh, God, it's going to hell."

TERENCE SMITH: But during economic downsizing, even this Pulitzer- winning paper now has empty desks.

PEOPLE SINGING: Amen amen...

TERENCE SMITH: The reporters that remain are busier than ever. Stephen Lee, a 17-year "Herald" veteran, starts his day early at this meeting of religious and community leaders. He had been the paper's full- time religion writer. Because of the cutbacks, he now covers religion and, he says, "everything else except sports." On this day, he was covering a double murder, the first in Grand Forks in 14 years. When he was done updating the investigation, he pulled double duty writing two front-page pieces.

STEPHEN LEE: We've kind of pulled our horns back in. We can't cover stuff like we used to. I can't devote the time that I used to to my religion beat. I have to take up whatever comes, and it is somewhat frustrating professionally.

TERENCE SMITH: And community leaders and others have taken note. Mayor Mike Brown:

MAYOR MIKE BROWN: This paper was our access to the community, and now we're finding that access is not as available as it was before because there are fewer people to access. So that frustrates us in city government because our word's not getting out, we feel, in a timely manner.

TERENCE SMITH: In fact, there have been oversights. The "Herald" missed a city council meeting on a key flood control project.

MIKE JACOBS: It was a scheduling oversight. That one is the one that you can probably lay at the downsizing.

TERENCE SMITH: "Come hell and high water" was the banner headline during the floods and newsroom motto. Jacobs now says meeting the new challenges will take the same ingenuity.

MIKE JACOBS: Personally, I'd be satisfied if I owned the "Herald" with a smaller return than Knight Ridder is satisfied with. But that's not my choice, and so, you know, I need to respond to the reality that exists.

TERENCE SMITH: And for the newspaper business in general, those realities have only grown more harsh since September 11.

FOCUS - HP COMPAQ - HARD SELL

JIM LEHRER: Now, a technology company's family struggle, and to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: When Hewlett Packard announced it would buy rival Compaq Computer in early September, the goal was to create the world's largest personal computer maker, one that could compete with the likes of IBM and Dell. But since the announcement, negative reaction from the stock market and skepticism from industry analysts have called into the question the deal's viability. In the latest setback for the merger, and possibly the most damaging, Hewlett-Packard's largest single shareholder, the Packard foundation, announced Friday that it plans to vote against the deal. A note to viewers: The NewsHour is funded in part by a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

For more on where the merger stands now, we're joined by peter coffee, technology editor at "e-Week," a newspaper covering the electronic business world. And Rob Enderle, technology analyst with the Giga Information Group, a consulting firm. Why don't we start with the companies themselves. Peter Coffee, tell us about Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, what they do, what they make.

PETER COFFEE, e-Week Magazine: Well, Compaq really exploded on the scene with its introduction of the first so- called luggable, portable PC although supposedly sketched out on a place mat, it was a 34-pound box but it worked just like an IBM PC -- that was of course a fixed desktop machine. And it really propelled the company into one of the fastest early growth periods that's ever been seen in the history of corporate America. Later on the company acquired Digital Equipment Corporation largely for its services field force to try to get out there and start selling the high-value services that are increasingly being wrapped around information technology. Hewlett-Packard is known to generations of engineers for things like calculators. Then it moved into personal computers and larger computers. It has a very profitable business in printers - formerly pen plotters although that's gone now -- but the company is very well respected for the strength of its technology and for the integrity with which it's always made a habit of doing business.

RAY SUAREZ: So Rob Enderle, here we have two big players. When the leaders of these two companies announced their intention to merge, what was the rationale? What was attractive about each side in the new marriage?

ROB ENDERLE: Well, the thought was that you would gain economies of scale by combining two of the largest players particularly in retail, in the retail of PC's into one company. You could quickly grow to a company that would rival IBM, certainly beat Dell in terms of sales size and with regard to IBM services, scope. So it added up kind of a concept of being able to jump ahead of the market, much like Compaq wanted to do with Digital and quickly reach a position where you would have cost advantages and sizedrevenue advantages over the other competitors in the space.

RAY SUAREZ: We've seen a lot of mergers where bigness is a cornerstone of the rationale. How was this announcement received?

ROB ENDERLE: It wasn't received well. I think one of the big problems is the large mergers that have occurred in the space, the Compaq-Digital, NEC-Packard Bell merger have been colossal failures. In those two cases it was a healthy company acquiring an unhealthy company. In this case both companies were under a great deal of pressure and the industry and looked said this doesn't make sense to us. You have two companies that are both not as well as they should combining -- they kind of view this as being the end result will be a much larger unhealthy company.

RAY SUAREZ: Peter Coffee, what followed was the oldest sons of the two founders both announcing pretty soon after that they were going to use their blocks of shares to oppose this thing. Now comes the Packard Foundation's announcement. How big a role and why does the family play this big a role in a company that's moved on from close family control?

PETER COFFEE: Well, the garage in which the original founders of the company built their first product was at one point considered one of the central landmarks of Silicon Valley, almost its birthplace, if you will. That was a piece of audio equipment that was sold to Disney to make the movie Fantasia. The reference in which Silicon Valley holds Hewlett-Packard should not be underestimated and the notion that it might be moving away from its core values is threatening to a great many people. I think what people want to see is the notion that the success of Hewlett-Packard will continue to be based on innovation and solving problems rather than becoming another player of a monopoly game and pushing pieces around the board and using the same commodity technologies that everybody else uses but trying to make its way just by deal making. That's not what people of when they think of that company. That's why the founders' heirs are exerting the leverage that they are in the discussion of the proposed merger.

RAY SUAREZ: A lot of people have talked about individual shareholders who comment in public have talked about something called the HP way. What is that?

PETER COFFEE: The HP way has been, as I was saying earlier, based on one engineer at one product development bench looking over at the next bench and seeing what his colleague would find a better way of getting his job done and saying we ought to make that and the kind of internal growth by engineers looking at each others' work, seeing each others' problems and finding very remarkable and clever solutions to those problems rather than simply adopting the same cookie-cutter technology Microsoft Operating Systems, Intel processors and just putting it in a box with a different trademark on the outside.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Rob Enderle, now that the Hewletts and the Packards have spoken publicly and together they control about 18% of the traded shares of the company, what does that mean for the other 82?

ROB ENDERLE: Well the majority of those are owned by institutional stockholders and those stockholders are likely to look at this very similar to the way the Packard foundation did -- in other words do a level of analysis to see if this really does make sense and if they do follow that same method, they're likely to conclude much the same way that Packard did that this is not a good idea for the firms. I think what was lost when the firms first came up with this idea of going together was the cost of the overall merger itself, the loss of business, the kinds of trauma that occurs during the merger and now that's come back to bite them as they try to go through the approval process.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, central to this story is recently hired Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. She's got a lot riding on this, doesn't she?

ROB ENDERLE: Pretty much. Her job's really riding on this. There have been a series of failures that go back to an attempt to acquire a services organizations to fill out the services unit that fell through, a series of repetitive lay-offs which have caused staff problems and dissension in the ranks. Of course this would be the biggest failure. Yes this clearly has... This clearly has the possibility of doing her career a great deal of damage.

RAY SUAREZ: Peter Coffee, bounce off of what you just heard Rob Enderle say. Is this an uphill battle for Carly Fiorina and is it one that is lost already?

PETER COFFEE: I don't know if it's lost already. But the stress has been placed on what a great deal this is for the two companies, and there has not been a lot coming Ms. Fiorina on the subject of what this does for the customers. There has not been enough of a statement of why the combined companies will be able to solve their customers' problems in ways that neither company alone can promise. And I think that's the message that really needs to be driven home in a very profound way if they're going to get the stockholder majority that they need for the deal to move forward.

RAY SUAREZ: Has this deal become in part a victim of tough times? If we had been working with the pre-bubble burst numbers, might it all have looked more like a done deal?

PETER COFFEE: I think that what we've seen here is not so much a victim of any dot-com implosion. The demand for the technologies that these two companies make continues to be quite strong. When people say the market is soft in this area, that's what happened if you have five different companies that each thought they could get a third of the market. You have a certain amount of excess capacity but companies are still buying information technology in a big way. The problem is they want to see that technology supported by services that really help them solve very difficult problems of making different pieces of software talk directly to each other, having fewer expensive and sometimes error-prone people involved, the whole web services mantra that we've been hearing from Microsoft and other companies really depends on a very high level of professional services to support the technology. What needs to be heard from Ms. Fiorina and from the Compaq management is how that field technology force that they've got out there is going to evolve from essentially people who come out and fix things to people who come out and fix businesses. That's really the challenge that needs to be addressed.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Rob Enderle, just heard Peter refer to five players that all want a third of the market. Isn't merger one of the rational ways to make sure they're both standing at the end of this?

ROB ENDERLE: Well certainly that was one of the things that was proposed by the financial analysts as the market started to collapse was the fact that companies were going to have to merge and in a way it was strange to see a lot of those analysts come out and be credibly critical about this particular merger. Fundamentally the difficulty is we've got so few successes to point to in this space, in fact virtually none, that it was very important that Fiorina and her staff get out real early and explain why this one was going to be different. It's a political battle. This is a case where the lead politician trying to drive their case through was largely quiet throughout the process. In fact as different things started to break, it was incredibly surprising that the counter message was not driven back through, that there was in fact value here. It was unfortunately is appearing to be a political battle where the politician that's fighting for their job is not really showing up at the critical meetings and press events.

RAY SUAREZ: Rob Enderle, Peter Coffee, thank you both.

CONVERSATION - POET LAUREATE

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, a conversation with the new poet laureate of the United States, and to Elizabeth Farnsworth.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The new poet laureate is Billy Collins, and he gave his inaugural reading at the Library of Congress last week. He is the author of six collections of verse, the most recent, "Sailing Around the Room," was published in September and it's been a best seller in San Francisco, Boston, and other cities. The book is in its fifth printing, which is unusual for poetry. Collins is Professor of English at Lehman College, City university of New York, where he has taught for 30 years. Thanks for being with us, Mr. Collins, and congratulations on being Poet Laureate.

BILLY COLLINS, Poet Laureate: Thank you very much. It's good to be here.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I want to talk about this issue of accessibility. I notice that the word "accessible" is used a lot in reviews and discussions of your poetry meaning, I guess, easy to understand. It is a word you like? Do you try to be accessible?

BILLY COLLINS: Well, I've gotten tired of it actually. It's a little overused, not just in application to my work, but a lot of other poets I think. I think accessible just means that the reader can walk into the poem without difficulty. The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. But the real question is what happens to the reader once he or she gets inside the poem? That's the real question for me, is getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere because I think of poetry as a kind of form of travel writing.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You have a poem that's kind of about this. Read it. We'll keep on with this discussion.

BILLY COLLINS: Well, the poem is called "Introduction to Poetry." It's about the teaching of poetry to students. "Introduction to Poetry." "I asked them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to water ski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore but all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: (Laughs) There's a lot here. Part of it is just you're asking people to approach this with a lighter heart than they sometimes think they should, right?

BILLY COLLINS: I think so. Often people, when they're confronted with a poem, it's like someone who keep saying "what is the meaning of this? What is the meaning of this?" And that dulls us to the other pleasures poetry offers.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Is it... Would you say it's something of a cause with you or has been to avoid pomposity? To... It's subtle what you're doing. It isn't that it's easy. It looks very hard to me, but it is... You use the word "hospitable." You're very hospitable to your reader.

BILLY COLLINS: Well, I think I'm making up for previous sins, because when I was in graduate school, I was taught that difficulty was part of the value of poetry, and I committed the sin of difficulty over and over again in my earlier writing. It took quite a while for me just to try to speak more clearly. I'm very aware of the presence of a reader, and that probably is a reaction against a lot of poems that I do read which seem oblivious to my presence as a reader.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you think that American poetry has gotten too difficult?

BILLY COLLINS: Well, I think it's getting... I think it reached a high-water mark of difficulty probably in the '50s and '60s, but I think there's a lot of very good, plainspoken poetry today. There are interesting forms of difficulty, and there are unprofitable forms of difficulty. I mean, I enjoy some difficult poetry, but some of it is impenetrable and I actually wouldn't want to penetrate it if I could perhaps.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: (Laughs) You use humor a lot. You really like humor in your poetry, don't you?

BILLY COLLINS: Well, humor for me is really a gate of departure. It's a way of enticing a reader into a poem so that less funny things can take place later. It really is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Let's read one of your poems, which isn't humorous.

BILLY COLLINS: Well, that might be hard to find. Well, this is a poem called "Design." "I pour a coating of salt on the table and make a circle in it with my finger. This is a cycle of life, I say to no one; this is the wheel of fortune, the Arctic Circle. This is the ring of Kerry and the White Rose of Trulli. I say to the ghosts of my family, the dead fathers, the aunt who drowned, my unborn brothers and sisters, my unborn children. This is the sun with its glittering spokes and the bitter moon. This is the absolute circle of geometry I say to the crack in the wall, to the birds who cross the window, this is the wheel I just invented to roll through the rest of my life, I say, touching my finger to my tongue."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: A circle of salt. This is a bleak poem.

BILLY COLLINS: Well, there's a little salty taste at the end of it. It's a meditation on a little geometric form. I think it might be an example of starting a poem with something simple. I always found-- as a child, at least-- if there was sugar or salt poured on the table it was irresistible to draw something in it, some little ideogram or a mark. And it just takes something very basic like that and scrutinizes it. I mean, I have a theory, really it's an analogy, that if time... Rather if matter is made of atoms and when you smash an atom it releases all this energy, that time is made of moments and when you scrutinize a moment in a poem, it also can release a kind of energy. And that poem is trying to focus on something and then by scrutinizing it taking its layers off and seeing what's there.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: When you sit down and scrutinize that moment, do you try to write the poem in one sitting? How do you do it?

BILLY COLLINS: Yes, I write pretty rapidly. I mean maybe my critics would say, "well, that's obvious." But I try to do it in one sitting only because I want the poem to... I have a feeling of momentum when I'm writing, and I want the moment to get to its ending because that's, for me, is the destination. I mean, the poem for me is like a ride and I'm the first one to take the ride. I want... And so I'm the first one to arrive. The conclusion for the reader is really the destination for me. And I couldn't just write eight lines of a poem and then come back to it a few days later. I have to complete this ride and discover the destination of the poem.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So you complete it fairly quickly, but then do then do you work on it for a long time afterwards?

BILLY COLLINS: Oh, sure. I mean, you go back and you think of another... Mostly it's getting the rhythm right and getting the cadence or just finding a better... It's polishing and working, as someone said, with tinier and tinier screwdrivers on it. But the initial rush is pretty much done fairly quickly, like a sketch.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And how will being Poet Laureate change what you do? Do you have big plans for your term of office?

BILLY COLLINS: Well, it's helping myself esteem to a great degree. But more than personally, well, I have one initiative called poetry 180, which is the idea is to get a poem read every day in American high schools as part of the public announcements. I am hand picking 180 poems, which I think are, well, accessible, for lack of a better word or hospitable. And I hope that they will... High schools will pick up on this. We're going to list the poems on the Library of Congress web site at the beginning of the year next year. The idea would be to have high school students hear a poem every day, so that the poem will be a feature of daily life and not something that's just taught. I'm going to discourage teachers from teaching the poem or bringing it into the classroom. So right now, we're kind of constructing this jukebox of poems, and once it's up, we'll plug it in and it will run.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Sounds great to me. Thanks for being with us and congratulations Billy Collins.

BILLY COLLINS: Thank you.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of the day: Afghan opposition forces launched a three-pronged attack in the mountains where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding. And President Bush considered whether to release a videotape of bin Laden. Top administration officials said it proved he was behind the September 11th attacks. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.