News by Computer

The city rooms of many American newspapers are cousins in dishevelment: battered typewriters, mounds of gnawed pencils and crumbling gum erasers, a perpetual blizzard of paper. Nor would turn-of-the-century newsmen have any trouble recognizing many contemporary composing rooms with their mastodonic Linotype machines (first used in 1886) that engorge hot metal and spit out lines of type at a lumbering pace. Of all commercial activities, few have seemed more immune to technological progress than the production of daily papers. But the pace of change is now accelerating. In a small but growing number of offices, reporters are writing stories, and editors are correcting them, without touching pencil, typewriter or paper.

Lighted Blip. Technology's beachheads have been made at the two major U.S. wire services, the Associated Press and United Press International. With the prospect of newspaper automation clearly in front of them, A.P. and U.P.I. several years ago began investigating the use of computers to transmit stories. A.P. eventually chose a system developed by Hendrix Electronics Inc. of Londonderry, N.H.; U.P.I, selected a similar method using equipment produced by the Harris-Intertype Corp. of Cleveland. The major innovation in both is the use of a modified cathode-ray-tube device (CRT), which combines a television screen and a keyboard linked to a central computer.

CRTS glow eerily at U.P.I, headquarters in New York and at ten A.P. regional "hubs" across the U.S. When correspondents' stories reach these central offices, they are now fed directly into computers. Seated next to their CRTS, wire-service editors can order the computer to display on-screen a list of all stories filed during the previous 24 hours. Another command can call up the text of a story, which is then seen on the screen in segments of up to 31 lines at a time. As the editor electronically rolls the story forward, he can maneuver a lighted blip called a "cursor" to make changes in the copy. If he wants to revise a paragraph, he presses buttons that tell the cursor to remove that block of text. Then he types in his own version on the screen. The edited story is returned to the computer and sent to subscribing papers. The wire services have already invested more than $5,000,000 in news automation.

The full effects of these alterations depend on the newspapers that get the copy. Without special receiving equipment, wire-service stories still creep in over Teletype machines at the maximum rate of 66 words a minute. Papers that have invested in new machines are a long leg up on competitors; high-speed printers can receive wire stories at 1,050 words a minute, a major advantage at deadline time.

One paper prepared to take full advantage of wire-service advances is the Detroit News (circ. 683,452), the nation's largest evening paper. Like many other metropolitans, it has had increasing trouble in distribution as its audience spreads farther into the suburbs. The News' answer: a $42 million modernization program that includes an automated printing plant 23 miles north of Detroit. It is plugged in electronically to editorial headquarters downtown.

Since August, the paper's writing and editing have been carried out on a modified version of the A.P.-Hendrix CRT. Gone from the newsroom is the clattering of typewriters. The loudest sounds now are the occasional howls from reporters still baffled by their futuristic machines. A CRT has 47 more keys than the standard typewriter, such as ETX (end of text). Thus the possibilities for fumble-fingered writing errors have multiplied. One of those keys, the "kill" button, even whisks the story off the screen and erases it from computer memory. (The News has nine new computers, capable of storing 3,000,000 words.) When stories began vanishing into electronic limbo, the News was forced to modify its CRTS so that the "kill" button must be hit twice before a story dies.

Though some reporters and desk-men complain about adjustment problems, News executives are certain that their investment will pay off in increased efficiency and better distribution. Once stories are edited in the newsroom, computers transmit them to the printing plant, set type photographically at 300 lines a minute and partially control the operation of six new three-story-high presses. The changes mean that late-breaking stories can get into the paper 15 minutes before press time, as compared with the hour required previously.

Resistance by craft unions has been the biggest obstacle to newspaper automation. The News has no Newspaper Guild representation and is now in arbitration with the typographers' union over details of the changes, but labor problems continue to inhibit automation at many big papers, like the New York Times. Several smaller publishers are trying the changes and liking them. The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle (circ. 50,448) and its sister evening Herald (circ. 19,277) began installing CRTS a year ago, now have ten in operation and ten more ordered. Chronicle Managing Editor Robert Brown points out that his CRT gives him instantaneous access to any story in the office.

One kink in the system, Brown adds, is that everyone wants to type on the CRTs: "A copy boy one night was writing a message on one about going across town to see a friend. He didn't know it, but he was adding a paragraph to a story and it got in the paper."

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