Crucial Day

Crucial Day When antitrust lawyers filed their suit against the New Orleans Times-Picayune last June (TIME, June 26), they had an arm-long list of charges against the T-P and its afternoon sister, the States. By running the States at a loss, they charged, the Times-Picayune was trying to freeze out Publisher David Stern's afternoon Item ; by threatening to withhold the T-P and States from news vendors handling the Item, it had tried to keep the Item off the streets; by requiring national advertisers to run their ads in both the T-P and the States, the T-P was exposing the Item to unfair competition.

By last week, as the long, involved trial ended in federal court, the only charge that seemed to have been proved was one the T-P readily admitted: it had required national advertisers to sign up for both papers, and it insisted that that was a perfectly legal practice. The court, faced by 1,700 pages of testimony and 150 exhibits, would hand down its decision in late summer. It will be a crucial day for publishers, since 176 other U.S. newspaper combinations follow the same advertising practice and may be affected by the court's ruling.

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