Too Impatient to Talk

It seemed like a rerun of 1964. Once again, Detroit's two strike-prone newspapers were closed down. As before, contract negotiations had been proceeding fairly smoothly when one union got too greedy and stopped talking. Once again, interim papers quickly sprang up. The question was: Would the strike that began on Nov. 16 last as long as the previous one: 134 days?

For a while, it had looked as if there would be no strike at all. The 14 unions were asking for a 30% hike over a two-year contract; the papers offered an 8% increase. Bargaining was amiable, and most of the contracts were not due to expire until the end of November. But the Teamsters, whose contract expired earlier, were impatient and anxious to grab the lead in negotiations. They struck the News; the Free Press, which bargains jointly with the News, closed down as well. Said one union official: "The Teamsters jumped the gun, that's all."

Filling the Gap. That wasn't the only gun jumped by Teamsters. Aware of the financial success of one of the interim papers during the last strike, three Teamster Union members helped form ahead of time a corporation designed to put out a paper once there was a shutdown. The Daily Dispatch was the result. Other Teamsters were also distributing two more interim papers, the Daily Press, which calls itself "the paper you've waited for since 1964," and the Daily Express, which boasts that it is "Michigan's largest daily newspaper." There is at least a smattering of truth to the claims; the papers look quite professional and carry national and international news as well as local. The Express' run is an estimated 285,000. The three papers have absorbed most of the editorial staff of the Free Press; so far News editorial staffers are still on the News payroll. Except for the big department and food stores, advertising is coming in. If the strike lasts long enough, the Daily Press hopes to match its 1964 profit of $500,000.

Local television is also filling the news gap. Not only have the commercial stations increased their coverage but educational channel 56 got an unprecedented ten-week grant of $3,000 a week from the Ford Foundation for an evening news program. In a studio equipped with typewriters and telephones, Detroit Free Press staffers read and discuss the day's news. The program also includes editorials, book and movie reviews. As is usually the case when camera-shy newsmen go on TV they stumble over words but project an air of authenticity. Deplorable as the strike is, Detroit is about the only U S city where a shutdown of the dailies has not appreciably reduced the flow of news.

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