15th Week in Detroit

Detroit has had nine newspaper strikes in nine years, but never before has a shutdown lasted longer than the one that muffled the News and the Free Press 15 weeks ago. And never before has the prospect of settlement looked bleaker. Except for minor concessions, the two sides remained just as far apart as they were when Freeman Frazee, president of the Detroit printing pressmen's union, led his men off both papers-an exodus joined by one other union, the paper and plate handlers. "Smoky" Frazee has clung stubbornly to his demands, which include premium pay for pressmen working Saturdays. The papers have been equally adamant in refusing them.

The strike has had a curious reaction: each passing week made it clearer that Detroit was not only able to get along without its main papers; it did not even seem to miss them. Instead of mourning the loss of important advertising outlets, the city's merchants have merely increased their ad budgets in the suburban press. Department-store sales for August-September are up by 15% over the same months a year ago. Allied Theaters, an association of movie houses, which might once have regarded newspaper ads as vital crowd-collectors, reported its best summer yet.

Public indifference to the strike is so general, in fact, that Governor George Romney seems to be the only man in Michigan working overtime to end it. But the Governor's special Strike Commission gave up in despair, called it "a naked power struggle, increasing in intensity as the strike is prolonged."

The silence of the News and the Free Press has hurt Romney less than it has hurt Neil Staebler, his Democratic opponent, who needs a big-city sounding board because Democratic office seekers must count on a heavy Wayne County majority (Detroit and suburbs) to offset the strongly Republican vote elsewhere in the state. Thus there was little surprise last week when the effort to solve the strike was shifted to Washington-where influential Democrats are presumably eager to come to the help of Neil Staebler. Both sides were invited to air their grievances before a panel of federal mediators.

It was the first slightly optimistic note in the impasse. No one was yet ready to say that the end to Detroit's longest and bitterest newspaper strike was even in sight but both sides at least were talking.

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