Page images
PDF
EPUB

CHAPTER III

FACTORS IN DECLINE OF COMPETITIVE PRESS

There is no easy or single explanation for the decline in the number of newspapers and the competition among them. A whole complex of factors-none of which has ever been studied adequately; nor can be, except by Congress is responsible. We have only the most meager information. The data sketched in the succeeding few pages are designed only to serve as guidelines for the full-scale studies which must be undertaken in this field so crucially important to the survival of democracy. Again and again, more research or further study is recommended. In several places suggestions for executive-agency surveys are made. But Congress, through one of its committees, should plan them, after adequate hearings, and coordinate their results, for even this brief glimpse of the problems indicates the need of Congressional action. An outline for such a study, which the Senate Small Business Committee had hoped and planned to make, includes:

1. The raw materials:

Equipment.
Newsprint.

Syndicate material.

Distribution via Post Office.

2. The wherewithal:

Capital needs and resources.
Circulation revenue.

Advertising revenue.

3. The human factors:

Skilled labor.

Skilled management.

The guaranty of a supply of newsprint is of most immediate importance to prevent the possible death of hundreds of small papers and printing establishments and the stillbirth of many others. The other factors, taken together add up to the economic well-being of small

[blocks in formation]

Technology is the root problem of the small paper's capital requirements and production costs. Drastic changes in the processes of production are in prospect in the immediate future. They will be of two general kinds. One is the improvement of conventional typesetting and printing equipment. The other is the more complicated switch to wireless broadcasting or facsimile newspapers. Trying to foresee what will happen to small paper equipment at this point is like trying to guess whether a cloud on the horizon no bigger than a man's hand will grow into a storm or blow away. Yet a sweeping technological

96840-47- -5

27

revolution is probably enough to demand some coordinated study by Government (particularly the Department of Commerce, its Office of Technical Services, Division of Small Business, and Bureau of Standards), and some representative publishers, equipment manufacturers, and printing trades-union leaders.

The costs of mechanical production make up the major part of the expenditures of the small paper. At the moment when the possibilities of expanding circulation and advertising revenues are good, most publishers are less concerned about their mechanical efficiency than about newsprint with which to expand readership and space sales. But the time is not far distant when there will be a premium on lowcost, efficient mechanical operation. Moreover, improved technology might lower the investment required to begin a newspaper, one of the essentials for easy access for newcomers. In terms of relative costs, composing-room expenses hit smaller daily papers harder according to the following table from the testimony of Nelson Poynter, publisher of St. Petersburg Times before the National Labor Relations Board (St. Petersburg, January 24, 1946):

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Weekly newspapers, according to a survey by the American Press, are published on presses which average 26 years of service, and that does not include about one-fourth of the cases in which the publisher gave answers like "I've only been here 50 years," or "God only knows." Job presses which bring in one-third of the income of this group of publishers in printing miscellanea for local people, are somewhat younger. Typesetting equipment (practically no small publishers still set type by hand) averages 16.6 years of age. According to the same study the investment of the average weekly in equipment is $15,350.

Many small papers have orders in for new equipment which they vitally need, but the manufacturers have not yet reached prewar production levels. One Alabama publisher writes:

Newspaper equipment is fast wearing out and getting outmoded. I would estimate that 75 percent of all the weekly and similar publications need to reequip their shop either partially or completely, but they cannot afford to do so. The only way these small operators can look at a piece of machinery is Will it ever pay for itself? A majority of weekly publishers are at a handicap carrying on because

they need equipment and they can't get it even if they were able to pay for it. Consequently they skimp along and make hand labor perform what machinery could do more efficiently and quickly.

Aside from the present shortage of equipment, which is almost certainly temporary, complaints about the tight control of the typesetting machine manufacturing industries were expressed in letters to the committee. The following from Louisiana is typical:

There are only two companies making typesetting equipment. Far and away the largest is the Mergenthaler Linotype Co. The other is the Intertype Co. Very few papers can get along without doing business with the Linotype Co.at their prices. All during the war typesetting equipment and parts have been desperately hard to get. Yet the Linotype Co. during this period has junked machines many weeklies needed badly. An example was a machine traded in by the (another paper) far better and newer than the one we are "making do." It was broken up in the alley with a sledge and sold for junk-$6.95. Though there is no known collusion, Intertype has fallen far short of its early promise to bring competition to this field, so essential to small publishers. Please withhold the use of my name or firm name.

Time has not permitted the committee's staff to check this or other complaints like it. The complete dominance of these two firms is demonstrated for the weekly papers in the American Press study results which show 72 percent of the publishers using Linotype machines and 28 percent Intertype. Possible violations of the antitrust laws or misuse of patent rights should be looked into.

The end of mechanical type casting has been forecast by somepublishers. They report the development of devices which enable typists, instead of trained linotype operators, to set type. Others tell of the possibilities of setting type directly from tape recording or even wireless signals. Still others see promise in the development of light metals or plastics from which new kinds of forms or plates can be made. Some of these would completely change printing processes. In this connection, veterans have written about their efforts to make use of printing processes and equipment (like photo-offset) which were used for ship or company newspapers while they were in service. Others were simply anxious to locate surplus war equipment which they might use in starting papers. A Nebraska publisher writes:

Another "gripe" is the fact that our machinery has become worn, or even obsolete. While stationed out in San Francisco, I investigated the purchase of some "multilith" printing equipment. It had been purchased as war surplus somewhere, but I wasn't in a position to buy then, as I did not know how long I would be in the service.

Since my return, I have been trying to find some of this equipment, but have been unsuccessful. I finally wrote the small business section of the Department of Commerce, and they have just advised me they will ask the War Assets Administration to search.

Still another possible war source of small publication equipment innovation is in the study of German techniques. The Department of Commerce has already announced the initiation of such a study by a Mr. William M. Stocker, consultant for the Cuneo Press of New York City. The results are to be made public, but most of the processes thus far reported are not usable by small papers.

A survey should be made of the technological changes immediately possible, and the factors delaying further practical research. Allegations have been made by some small publishers about the lack of interest on the part of manufacturers in the design of equipment especially suited to the needs of small publishers which forces them to buy big

papers' cast-off equipment with resulting inefficiency. Thus a Montana publisher writes:

A long-range program in the printing machinery manufacturing field would help. These firms are chiefly pointed toward more and more expensive, and more and more specialized machines. For instance the Linotype people no longer manufacture a general utility machine, and their cheapest model useful to a weekly newspaper runs over $10,000. Presses now made are high-speed, precisionbuilt, and high-priced. Some medium-priced equipment especially engineered for the small weekly would help.

A small Minnesota daily's business manager says:

Establishment of a governmental research department whose aim is to reduce cost of newspaper production also has its disadvantages. However, if it, as an example, sought means of developing offset newspapers, this combined form of printing with other type-producing developments which lend themselves to that form of printing, then such combinations might lead to sufficiently lowered costs so that second newspapers might operate profitably in one-paper towns. Newspapers themselves have too little money for this kind of research. Manufacturers of newspaper equipment also were so busy going through financial wringers during the thirties that they failed to make any major improvements. There has been no major production change in newspaper equipment since the turn of the century. In this mechanical age, that fact alone points to some problem.

The Department of Commerce, as part of a larger program could go a long way toward breaking this research bottleneck with a Bureau of Standards project to develop equipment especially designed for small papers.

FACSIMILE NEWSPAPERS

The most radical technological development likely to affect small papers will be the facsimile newspaper. Facsimile is a means of actually broadcasting printed words and images by FM radio. A page of text and/or pictures rather like a tabloid newspaper is prepared. The text and the headlines may be set by linotype and Ludlow headline machine, written in by a typist with a varityper, or drawn. Pictures are printed as any photograph might be. Each page to be broadcast is placed on a narrow turning cylinder. Then an "electric eye" scans the page, line by line, and translates the light and dark of letters or pictures into electrical impulses. These are then turned into radio signals which go along with, but do not interfere with, FM sound broadcasting. The radio signal can be picked up by any FM radio receiver which has a facsimile attachment. The signal is retranslated into electrical impulses. In the facsimile receiver these electrical impulses hit a roll of white paper which has been made chemically sensitive. The impulses reproduce the original images on the sheet in the receiver.

Although the principle of facsimile is about 20 years old, and applications have been used widely in other ways, the production of newspapers by this method is still in the experimental stages. Two firms-Finch Telecommunications and Radio Inventions (whose president, John V. L. Hogan is also president of the New York Times AM-FM stations) are carrying on the research for the establishment of facsimile systems. Here again, patent and research control need to be watched because of their possible effect on further centralization of communications.

Facsimile, when it becomes feasible, will mean the broadcasting of newspapers directly into the home, and will thus eliminate mail, truck, and newsboy delivery. At first it will probably be used for news flashes, advertisements, crop and weather reports, mostly to

supplement the local station's service. But it will not be long before page after page of facsimile newspaper will be rolling out of the slot in receivers in many homes. The cost of going into facsimile for an FM broadcaster has been estimated at $10,000. Combination AMFM-Facsimile receivers are already designed, ready to sell for less than $300 all told. A four-column newspaper can be transmitted at the rate of 28 square inches print per minute.

The bulk of the preliminary testing of facsimile is being done by large stations and papers. An announcement in July 1946, listed the following stations or papers as having ordered equipment: Station WOR, New York; WQXR, the New York Times station; the Baltimore News Post; the Washington, D. C. Post; the Boston Globe; WGN, the Chicago Tribune station; WNBH, the New Bedford (Mass.) station; WDRC of Hartford; KMBC, Kansas City; WABC in New York; St. Louis Star Times, the Miami Herald, etc. The future of facsimile is tied to the future of FM. It has been estimated that before the year is out there will be more than 700 FM stations on the air, and more than 3,000,000 receivers having FM. Many newspapers have applied to the Federal Communications Commission for FM licenses, which will enable them to broadcast their papers via facsimile. The most recent figures show that 34.2 percent of the 868 pending applications for FM licenses come from people with newspaper interests, 22 percent of whom are already in the AM field. Of 540 construction permits and conditional grants for FM stations already issued, 204 or 37.8 percent went to newspapers.

The FCC does not report how many of these licenses went to large, middle-sized or small publishers. Or how many went to the publisher of the only paper in the community. But it seems safe to say that most of the licenses went to, and most of the applications came from, the big publishers. The Commission should immediately clarify its policies with respect to the development of facsimile, and its impact on diversity of ownership. Such a policy is not easy to construct. There is already a limitation on the number of stations which can be owned by one interest-six. The Commission has also said, and properly, that it will consider newspaper applications in the light of the dangers of fostering local monopolies of press and radio. Yet some smaller papers need FM, and most small papers will want facsimile, if it becomes widely accepted.

One way of handling the facsimile side would be to issue separate licenses for the radio frequencies, and the right to facsimile, the latter to go to more than one user in every town. This would divide control over the two media. But aside from the licensing problems, the possible use of facsimile to keep small papers alive, and revive competition through the entry of newcomers who will compete with the standard press needs prolonged study. It is such a revolutionary change as to require the earnest, continued interest of the appropriate committees of the Congress.

NEWSPRINT

There is no need to quote copiously from statistical and other sources to establish that there is a shortage of newsprint. At least eight of every ten publishers who wrote the committee complained of some difficulty, immediate or threatening, in obtaining a supply of this -essential material on which to publish his paper. Some of them were

« PreviousContinue »