Supplements to the Diet

Newspapers were once content to dig up their own local news and run some wire-service copy on news of the rest of the world. Then they gradually began to import other material: columns, features, crossword puzzles, even editorials from various syndicates. Today they can add luster to their pages with "supplemental" news sent over leased wires by a handful of big metropolitan dailies. By paying anywhere from $50 to $850 a week, depending on their size and location, the papers, in effect, rent a Washington bureau and a string of foreign correspondents that they could not possibly afford to hire themselves. "Without these supplemental services, we would be lost," says Houston Chronicle News Editor Dan Cobb, who subscribes to three. "They are bringing about a revolution in the presentation of news."

There are six main supplemental services:

> The New York Times News Service started in 1917 with a mere four subscribers, now has 99 client papers in the U.S., and 55 abroad. It puts most of the Times's Washington and foreign coverage on the wire, plus some of the paper's local reporting; it also sends out the daily Times front-page makeup to show other editors how to play the news. Editor-Manager Rob Roy Buckingham aims for more and more subscribers among the nation's smaller newspapers. "The spread of the defense industries is bringing Ph.D.s into small towns," he says. "And people from the East, who are used to a diet of the Times, are moving all over."

> The Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service, founded in 1962, already has 70 subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, and 60 abroad. It offers an attractive combination of the Post's prestigious Washington bureau plus the Times's saturation coverage of the West Coast. Both papers are also building up their foreign staffs. Though jointly run, the service is located in Washington, where the stories are selected for the wire; roughly half of the copy comes from each paper.

> The Chicago Daily News Service, founded in 1898, is the oldest of the supplemental. It stresses background pieces, and with 14 correspondents abroad, it is strong on foreign coverage. To increase its 78 clients, most of them large metropolitan newspapers, the service is now running as many domestic stories as foreign. It is concentrating on sports, fashions and civil rights.

> The New York Herald Tribune News Service, begun in 1931, shares a leased wire with the Chicago Daily News Service, but is otherwise autonomous. It does considerably more editing than the other services, trimming and tailoring Trib stories to meet the needs of its 60 U.S. clients. It also assigns Trib reporters to handle stories that appear only on the wire, mails features and columns to smaller papers that cannot afford the wire service.

> The 38-year-old Chicago Tribune Press Service, which also draws on Reuters and the New York Daily News, sends out a heavy dose of Midwestern stories to 38 clients, all in the U.S. Running mostly background stories, the service often puts Trib reporters to work exclusively on wire stories; Trib Washington Bureau Chief Walter Trohan contributes as many as two or three columns a week. The Trib discourages editorial comment in stories. "We have clients in the North and South," says Editor-Manager Tom Burns, "and we have to please them all."

> The North American Newspaper Alliance is not affiliated with a newspaper. Founded in 1922, it specializes in big bylines. In 1936, it sent Ernest Hemingway to cover the Spanish Civil War; more recently, it hired Harry Truman to comment on politics. This month Dean Acheson will write a report on Viet Nam. NANA's 19 full-time staffers also turn out yards of women's news on food and fashions for the service's 140 U.S. clients.

Prestige & Competition. Newspapers use supplemental for a variety of reasons. The Orlando Sentinel takes the New York Times service, even though it is admittedly unhappy with the tone of some of the reporting. "A lot of this is prestige," says a Sentinel editor. "You can't avoid that." Other editors like to write a story from a blend of the services. "Two services are better than one," says San Francisco Chronicle Executive Editor Scott Newhall, "and three are better than two." Even when they decide not to run supplemental stories, editors quite often find them useful. "They are a tremendous help in evaluating events," says Miami News Editor Bill Baggs. "You get more background and diversity of opinion. They're most helpful to editorial writers."

To some extent, the supplemental have cut into the territory of the Associated Press and United Press International, though the wire services deny that the supplemental are really competitive. "As the service of record, we cover the news fronts from every corner of the world," says A.P. General Manager Wes Gallagher. "The supplemental just hit the high spots." Nevertheless, some papers have dropped U.P.I, after adding the supplemental. "If the supplementals grow as much in the next five years as they have in the past five," says Denver Post Managing Editor William H. Hornby, "metropolitan papers will begin to wonder if they need both of the regular wire services."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.