Newspapers Ban News

Springfield, Mass, has three of the most remarkably managed newspapers in the U.S.: the morning Union, the afternoon News and the Sunday Republican. They are jointly owned by their own lush employee benefit and retirement funds, set up by the late eccentric Publisher Sherman Hoar Bowles, who endowed them with much of his personal fortune (Atlas Tack, Longchamps Restaurants, real estate). They jointly bask in a great journalistic inheritance from Sherman Bowles's grandfather Samuel II (1826-78), who made the Republican into one of the nation's top 19th century newspapers.* The Union (circ. 79,719) is ardently Republican; the News (circ. 98,805) is ardently Democratic. But nothing about the three papers is so startling as their behavior since last June, when they jointly launched a foredoomed policy to kill political news.

Up in the city rooms went a memo banning all pictures and statements of politicians, restricting headlines to one column, recommending that any necessary story on politics be held to two paragraphs, and proclaiming: "The less printed about politicians the better." To justify downplaying political news in an election year, the three managing editors argued that they were just trying to cull dull campaign statements that once cluttered their pages, and that the recession had required a space cut. But knowledgeable staffers say that the memo really stemmed from the management's disgust with politicians in general. Reason: last spring legislation sponsored by Massachusetts Senators Leverett Saltonstall and John F. Kennedy, to legalize the status of the papers' employee trust funds, died in committee, left standing a $15.8 million federal tax suit.

Out of the Picture. Inspired in concept, sweeping in scope, the antipolitics policy could never last, and it broke up in a comedy of frustration.

At first, enforcement was rigid; nothing appeared but one-column pictures and thumbnail sketches of candidates ("Ingrown thumbnails," growled one disgusted politician). Photographers once shunted aside Governor Foster Furcolo, who comes from the Springfield suburb of Longmeadow, when he swore in a local judge. Cagey church groups took to shoving politicians out of their cornerstone-laying ceremonies so that the pictures would be printed.

Things got so bad that the papers completely ignored a visit of Republican U.S. Senate Candidate Vincent Celeste, only six persons showed up in nearby Westfield for a rally that had been brushed off by the papers, and an able Republican attorney refused to run for Congress because of the publicity blackout (leaving the race uncontested). Only one Matthew Ryan, a Democratic candidate in the September primary for district attorney, turned the news ban to profit. He hired a former Union sportswriter to make up a full-page ad of pictures and stories praising Ryan, in the typographical style of the Sunday Republican. He submitted the ad just seven minutes before deadline, and it showed up in print, looking for all the world like a standard page. The readers, evidently taking the page as a switch in policy by the conservative Republican, gave Democrat Ryan the victory.

Massive Retaliation. Then came the breakdown. The ironic reason: partisan politics between the Republican Union and Democratic News. When G.O.P. Gubernatorial Candidate George Fingold died suddenly ten days before the primary, the Union played the story big--and defiantly added details of the balloting process necessary to vote for his replacement. The ice broken, the Union three weeks ago slyly slipped a brief story about campaigning Republicans onto Page 40. In massive retaliation, the News last week plastered its front page with a lengthy Senator Kennedy interview, gave the story a three-column head, and tossed in his picture to boot. When Union editors bristled, News Managing Editor Frank Kelly replied blandly: "Kennedy is news."

That did it. This week all three papers are planning to give full coverage to the coming election campaigns. Neglected, the old memo still flutters in the city rooms, a monument to a hopeless cause. "It was just to educate the staff," explained Editor Kelly. "We were all a little startled at what it really looked like when you wrote it down," added Union Managing Editor Paul Craig.

* Said Horace Greeley of the Republican: "The best and ablest country journal ever published on this continent."

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