Signs in the Afternoon

Several publishers continue to be fascinated and frightened by the possibility of putting out a new afternoon paper for New York. The World Journal Tribune cost its three owners $17 million before it went under in May, after publishing only eight months, leaving the Post the sole survivor in the afternoon field.

As a possible competitor for the Post, the Times this week will put a mock-up of a new afternoon paper through a dry run. Dummies of the Times's entry, dated Oct. 1, show a standard-size page comprising only six columns. As yet unnamed, the new paper is the result of brain-trusting by a twelve-man committee of Timesmen headed by Assistant Managing Editor A. M. Rosenthal. Managing Editor Clifton Daniel stressed that the Times as yet has made no decision to publish. "This is an experiment to see what type of afternoon paper it might be if we go ahead. It is an effort to conceptualize."

Others are also conceptualizing. O. Roy Chalk, publisher of the city's Spanish language El Diario-La Prensa, has met with officials of seven newspaper unions in the hope of putting out a standard-size afternoon daily patterned after the Chicago Tribune. Chalk "did not make specific proposals," said a man who is something of a connoisseur of specific proposals, Bert Powers, president of the New York Typographical Union.

The Daily News has begun hiring consultants, such as James Dunn, a former circulation staffer on the World Journal Tribune, and Peter Palazzo, who redesigned the Sunday Herald Tribune before it folded. Palazzo worked on an afternoon format for the News for weeks. "My work is classified," says Palazzo. "At this delicate stage I shouldn't say any more."

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