How to Survive in the Afternoon

The New York World Journal Tribune was barely buried before other publishers began speculating about the vacant slot in the city's afternoon field. The New York Times, the New York Daily News and Time Inc. all acknowledged that they were considering the possibility of publishing a newspaper. The paper they talked about differed, of course, in many respects from the one that folded. But just what sort of paper would it be? Last week some people intimately acquainted with the vagaries of the New York newspaper scene offered opinions.

All pointed to a fatal flaw of the W.J.T.: its lack of focus. "A newspaper should have a distinctive personality," said New York Times Managing Editor Clifton Daniel. "It doesn't matter who runs it so long as it is commanded by a single intelligence and a single concept." Other than that, it does not have to be a newspaper in the traditional sense. "It could be a vastly smaller operation with a different philosophy and outlook," says one publisher. "I've always thought that there was a place in New York for another highbrow newspaper," says Walter Lippmann. "It's what the Herald Tribune should have been and what the W.J.T. was not. I mean an excellent newspaper, not a big paper like the Times. It should have the best art, music, financial and political criticism that you could get. I wouldn't expect it to have a large circulation, but it would have an extremely profitable circulation."

Story in Context. Clifton Daniel, on the other hand, stresses the need for the paper to be entertaining, to provide lighter fare than the news-heavy morning Times. "The afternoon paper," he says, "is largely read by people on the move, who have different expectations from those who read the morning papers. There's the stockbroker who wants the closing prices, the racing fan who wants the results, the office worker who has been penned up all day and wants information about things he has heard piecemeal on the radio or in gossip, and those who want to know what show and restaurant to take their wives to and what to watch on television."

The afternoon paper, say the experts, has a tougher job than the morning paper: it must print the news while it is still breaking. "A new paper, while close to the Herald Tribune in style, would have to be quicker," says James Bellows, the Trib's last editor, who is now associate editor of the Los Angeles Times. Instead of hiring worn-out legmen as rewrite men, says onetime Trib Editor John Denson, who is now executive editor of Atlas magazine, the paper should seek out specialists with enough knowledge at their command to put a story in context.

Jumping the Traffic. No matter how high the quality of the editorial product, costs must be kept down, the work force reduced, union restrictions eliminated, production fully automated. "One thing you've got to have is a modern plant," says Vincent Manno, the New York newspaper broker who brought Hearst, Howard and Whitney together for the ill-fated W.J.T. merger. "You can't spend less than $25 million and have the kind of plant necessary to put out a paper in the city of New York. A fully automated plant contemplates that the unions would permit it, and to my knowledge they never have. The newspaper is the only product I know of that's being manufactured today the same way it was 50 years ago."

If a new plant is not available, says Bellows, the paper could share production facilities with the New York Times --the kind of quasimerger that has taken place at considerable savings in other cities. As for the problem of distribution, that could be solved--unions permitting--by satellite printing plants fed by electronic transmission. "That way," says Denson, "you could jump across the New York traffic."

While others were contemplating a second afternoon daily, the existing one went calmly on its way as usual. Dorothy Schiff's liberal New York Post picked up some of the castoffs of the feature-fat W.J.T.: the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service, Columnists Walter Lippmann, Evans and Novak, Art Buchwald--and even right-wing William Buckley Jr. "The New York Post," explained a disclaimer, "recognizing its altered role as the only afternoon newspaper in New York, believes that it is a part of its journalistic duty to convey some expression of viewpoints different from its own." But the Post showed no signs of enriching its threadbare news coverage. "If only Dolly Schiff would bend a couple of degrees and broaden the horizons of her paper," noted Los Angeles Times Publisher Otis Chandler, "she could pick up one helluva rich market."

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