City Without Newspapers

In subways, on buses and commuting trains, straphangers accustomed to hiding behind the pages of newspapers peered uncomfortably across the aisles at the naked faces they had not looked at in years. "I'll give you a good example of how much I miss the newspapers," said one Manhattanite. "This week a friend of mine died and was buried before I heard a thing about it."

Enterprising editors of the Harvard Crimson and Yale Daily News saw their chance, hustled down to New York City by car with thousands of copies of their papers and gave them away free "at representative places--the Harvard Club, Yale Club, Wall Street and Tammany Hall." Copies of the Wall Street Journal (New York City circ. 14,576) and Journal of Commerce (N.Y.C. circ. 13,310) were grabbed up as soon as they hit the stands. Even such foreign-language dailies as La Prensa, Staats-Zeitung und Her old and Il Progresso Italo-Americano sold fast. The sensational weekly Enquirer (est. circ. 75,000) turned into a daily and upped its press run the first day of the strike to 250,000, went to 500,000, then was forced to skip a few days because "we're awfully tired." Newspaper-hungry readers bought magazines so fast that one newsstand operator pointed out: "All I got left is cheesecake and science fiction."

"Ask Me for the Latest." Department stores, with heavy Christmas advertising scheduled for the struck papers, reported a sharp drop in telephone and mail-order sales, but no noticeable slackening in the number of customers coming into the stores. One store filled its window with a big placard: "These Ads Would Have Been in the Sunday Times." Many stores took to radio and TV to sell their wares. WCBS reported 17 new ad accounts, and WOR said that "our sales department is going frantic turning down money." All stations stepped up their news broadcasts as well as ads. NBC put sandwich men on the streets carrying signs: "Ask Me for the Latest News." When asked, the sandwich men tuned in portable radios to newscasts. NBC also stepped up its newscasts from 23 to 48 a day, used the slogan, "You'll never miss your newspaper."

But few New Yorkers were satisfied with the scant, repetitive radio and TV news. When Associated Press Reporter Richard Feehan met former President Truman, who was visiting in Manhattan, on his morning walk, Truman complained that he did not get enough news from radio coverage. Reporter Feehan took Truman over to the A.P. building to watch the news ticker. (Truman returned to his hotel with a sheaf of A.P. stories under his arm.)

Mirror staffers went on the radio, talked about the stories that "would have appeared today." Included was a rendition by cigar-chomping, gravel-voiced Mirror Poet Laureate Nick Kenny of a song he helped write about Santa Claus, I'm Gonna Hang Up Mommy's Stocking. Theatrical producers moaned over the absence of newspaper reviews. Between acts of the second-night performance of Madam, Will You Walk (see THEATER), one of the play's producers hopefully told the audience: "We were a hit in [papers in] Newark and Brooklyn." The producer of the musical comedy Kismet leaped at a chance to appear on TV after the opening, along with the Herald Tribune's Critic Walter Kerr, was chagrined when he panned the show. The Metropolitan Opera hastily summoned 26-year-old Lucine Amara to make her debut singing the lead role of Mimi in La Boheme in Italian to replace ailing Hilde Gueden. "She did an outstanding job," said a Met official, "but nobody outside the audience heard about it."

Bite-Size News. New publishers appeared in unexpected places. Schrafft's chain of restaurants put out "News Home Style" (which also plugged "bite-size chocolates"), while the New York Central railroad, Standard Oil Co. (N.J.) and hotels published one-page mimeographed news summaries. But there was no satisfactory substitute for newspapers. Only the whitewings of New York's Department of Sanitation--probably alone among the city's 7,900,000--found life easier because of the newspaper strike: street litter was off 25%.

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