The Squeeze

Until now, about the closest contact many journalists have had with the recession was reporting what it did to other Americans. That vicarious experience is acquiring an edge of reality. Rising costs and shrinking revenues have begun to alter employment, format and, to a lesser extent, the quality of coverage at the nation's newspapers, magazines and broadcast stations.

The news industry's new recession is still relatively mild. Advertising revenues generally were up about 5% last year. But costs soared, newspaper circulation dropped slightly, and classified-ad linage fell by as much as 25% at the Miami Herald, Boston Globe and other metropolitan dailies--largely because of the slump in hiring, home building and car sales. The price of newsprint, about $175 a ton in late 1973, hit $260 a ton last month. Magazine advertising pages were down 2% last year overall, and many executives fear that 1975 will be worse. Says Esquire Publishing Group President Jerry Jontry, whose magazine ran 17% fewer ad pages in 1974 than a year earlier: "These are trying times."

Freeze Point. Publishers and station managers are responding to revenue pressures with extensive cost cutting. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, TIME, CBS and dozens of other major news organizations all have hiring freezes. The Christian Science Monitor is hiking its advertising and subscription rates and dropping some 100 employees. The Monitor is also switching to tabloid size in April, a move that will save $100,000 a year in paper costs. Newspaper Guild employees at the Washington Star-News voted to go on a four-day week, at four days' pay, in order to avoid the elimination of 100 jobs. WTTG-TV, Washington's Metromedia outlet, cut its budget by $500,000 this year and laid off a reporter and a weather forecaster. At Hugh Hefner's Playboy Enterprises, six of Out magazine's 35 editorial employees received notice two weeks ago; the company has a freeze on hiring and raises, and Hef himself has taken a 25% pay cut, from $305,800 to $229,350.

The squeeze shows, literally. The Los Angeles Times has reduced page size by a fraction of an inch to conserve costly paper, and the Miami Herald will follow suit next month. The Herald and others are switching from an eight-column to a six-column format, at least partly to save on wasted white space between columns. Papers like the Minneapolis Tribune, Houston Chronicle and Boston Globe are now cramming ten columns onto their classified pages instead of the usual eight.

As readers and viewers become increasingly preoccupied with the economy and other domestic problems, more and more news organizations feel free to skimp on foreign coverage. The Baltimore Sun will eliminate its Rio de Janeiro bureau in June, the Chicago Tribune has closed its Paris bureau, and the Washington Star-News this month is recalling its single foreign correspondent, Hong Kong-based Henry Bradsher. Costly wire and features services are also going. The Sacramento Union has saved as much as $80,000 a year by ordering its Associated Press ticker removed (and taking on the far less expensive Chicago Daily News/Sun-Times news service and Cartoonist Bill Mauldin), and Washington's WTTG-TV has for the moment stopped buying $100 commentaries by Columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak.

Pinchpenny Ethic. Even at organizations that have avoided cutbacks, a new pinchpenny ethic is having a subtle effect on quality. The Boston Globe last year dispatched Reporter Jack Thomas to Africa to do a series on world hunger, but has postponed sending him to South America for a followup. "We're not going out of our way to find expensive stories that can wait," says Editor Thomas Winship. The Washington Star-News decided not to send a reporter to Boston last month to report the abortion-manslaughter trial of Dr. Kenneth Edelin, an event the paper would normally have covered. Says a top reporter for the Oakland Tribune, where ten editorial employees have been laid off: "We are definitely missing some stories and photos because of the cutbacks. The news hole is smaller. Overtime has just about been eliminated. I should have covered a story in L.A. last week, but I couldn't go. They are pinching every penny."

That new parsimony may alarm reporters, but some of their bosses see it as an opportunity. Having to conserve newsprint, reports Bob Hudson, executive editor of the Tampa Tribune and Times papers, "makes writers out of writers and editors out of editors in a crunch situation." Indeed, the twin exigencies of rising costs and lowered budgets are forcing news executives to experiment with new formats and materials that might otherwise have been delayed. Not all of these innovations have been welcome, of course. The Baltimore Sun, burned by the soaring price of petroleum-based ink, last year tried to introduce a cheaper, water-based substitute, though more for technical than economic reasons. The experiment failed; the paper tried yet another ink and failed again. Reason: readers complained that the paper smelled bad.

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