Strange Chain

When the Colorado Springs Free Press (circ. 14,743) announced last week, that it was dropping its Sunday edition and boosting its weekday price (to 7-c-), the paper said in a Page One sales talk: "The first responsibility of a publisher is the same as that of any other businessman--to operate fairly and for motives of profit." But in fact, the Free Press, which has lost an estimated $1,700,000 in eleven years, is one of the fortunate few U.S. dailies that have not had to show a profit.

Reason: it is part of a strange chain owned by the International Typographical Union, which set out in 1946 to start competitive newspapers in monopoly towns where it considered existing publishers to be "unreasonable," i.e., anti-I.T.U.* The I.T.U.'s twelve-year losses on its papers are estimated at $25 million.

The Free Press was founded in 1947 after I.T.U. printers lost a contract battle with Colorado Springs' evening Gazette Telegraph (25,417), owned by hidebound Raymond Cyrus Hoiles (TIME, July 15), whose radically right-wing views fall just short of anarchy. Since last October Editor-Publisher Edward J. Byrne has fired 42 of 117 staffers (including five printers), Byrne warned last week that the paper is still in the red, will be folded if it is not in the black by May 1.

Of twelve other dailies bankrolled by the I.T.U. or its publishing subsidiary,

Unitypo Inc., two have been sold, eight folded. The survivors: > New York's Jamestown Sun (11,925), also run by Publisher Byrne, who says that after nine years of life it is now in the black and "for sale." < Labor's Daily of Bettendorf, Iowa, a money-losing, nationally distributed tabloid for union members, whose fate is to be decided this week by a special A.F.L.-C.I.O. committee in Washington. < The eight-year-old Columbia Basin News (circ. 11,409), published in Pasco, Wash. The News has been heavily subsidized (at least $500,000) by the I.T.U., is being sued by the crusading Tri-City Herald (14,275), which charges that the I.T.U.-backed News has conspired to force it out of business.

* But the I.T.U. subsidiary that publishes all but one of its papers steadfastly refuses to sign American Newspaper Guild contracts with its editorial employees.

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