Grim Bulletin

A paper struggles to save itself

The rumors began to circulate at the Philadelphia Bulletin last Monday morning. At 3 p.m., Publisher N.S. ("Buddy") Hayden stepped to a lectern that had been hastily propped on a reporter's desk.

Facing the staff members who jammed into the fourth-floor newsroom he said, "What I have to tell you is not pleasant."

The news: the financially ailing 134-year-old daily, which has lost $31.2 million since 1979--$10.3 million in the first half of this year--will publish its last edition on Aug. 16 unless the paper's eight unions agree to $5 million a year in cutbacks. The announcement brought a hush to the usually bustling newsroom. Said Bulletin Columnist Rose DeWolf: "You could hear a mosquito buzz."

The threat to shut down the Bulletin came just two weeks after Time Inc. announced it was closing the 128-year-old Washington Star. The reasons have become all too familiar in the darkening afternoon-newspaper market. Once Philadelphia's leading daily, the Bulletin suffered a steep circulation decline (down from 634,000 to 412,000 since 1970). The paper has held on to only 32% of the area's advertising linage in the face of stiff competition from the morning Inquirer (circ. 429,000), two smaller dailies and 24 suburban papers. Says one Philadelphia ad agency executive: "The Bulletin is thought of as being the second paper. If you want the middleclass, upper-income reader, you go to the Inquirer."

Three years ago, trying to halt its decline, the Bulletin introduced morning editions. Then, under the Florida-based Charter Co., which bought the Bulletin last year for $31 million, the daily was redesigned and suburban editions were sharpened. The staff of 2,100 was trimmed by 125, and a wage freeze was imposed on nonunion employees. Advertisers and readers continued to defect, and losses grew.

Charter, which has interests in oil, insurance and publishing (Ladies' Home Journal, Redbook), agreed to invest up to $30 million in the Bulletin in the next four years "if labor will join hands and help." Some think it may be too late. "In the long run, it's not going to make any difference," says John Morton, a publishing analyst at John Muir & Co.

"There's never been a paper that has turned around after the ad share has sunk as low as the Bulletin's." Perhaps. But the Bulletin is going to try. At week's end the paper's management and unions were discussing ways to cut costs. Says Hayden: "If we didn't think it was a sound plan, we'd just close the doors now."

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