Death of the Eagle

When he bought the Brooklyn Eagle 17 years ago, Publisher Frank D. Schroth took on a sickly paper and a tough labor problem. The Eagle had barely survived a 14-week strike by the Newspaper Guild. Right after he became publisher, Schroth announced: "With careful management and a lot of luck we will revive the Eagle. I sincerely hope to have the friendship of the Guild." Frank Schroth's management and the wartime boom gave the Eagle a semblance of health again; it pushed into the black off and on, and in 1951 won a Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service for its series on New York crime. But Schroth could not lick his Guild problem. At each round of wage negotiations, the Guild demanded the same wage scale as Manhattan papers, which is the highest scale in the U.S. Pointing to rising costs, Schroth pleaded that he could not pay. This year, in January, the 315 Guildsmen struck again, to try to keep up to the Manhattan scale.

Last week, on the 47th day of the strike (TIME. Feb. 28), Publisher Schroth admitted that the Guild problem had licked him. He closed the n 4-year-old Eagle "forever." Said Schroth bitterly: "On January 28 the paper had 130,000 circulation . . . and many loyal advertisers. It also had 630 employees. Now it has nothing. No circulation. No advertising. No employees. The consequences of the strike have destroyed the Eagle."

Fair Warning. Schroth had repeatedly given fair warning that he might be forced to close down. He had said flatly that he was unable to pay the $5.80 two-year package wage increase that Manhattan papers gave this year. Instead, he offered a $2.40 increase. The union replied that Schroth was "chiseling," and offered to take the case to arbitration, but only on the money questions. Schroth insisted that other "fringe benefits" of the Guild contract were important hidden wages, and refused to arbitrate unless the whole contract was subject to review. Said he: the Guild was asking the Eagle to accept "terms that would have doubled the Eagle's great financial loss of 1954." He pointed out that on the Guild's list of 177 U.S. dailies, the Eagle's scale ($131.50 a week minimum for experienced reporters) was eighth in the U.S., right behind Manhattan's seven big dailies ($138.50).

New York Guild Executive Vice President Tom Murphy argued that the ten mechanical unions in the Eagle's plant were paid Manhattan scale, "and we can't let Schroth claim: 'I've got enough money for everybody else but I haven't enough for you.'" Schroth replied by pointing out that the mechanical contracts had few of the benefits such as severance pay and sick leave that were in the Guild contract. Mediators tried to bring the two sides into agreement to save the paper, but the area of disagreement was too wide.

"Malignant Problem." When Schroth announced that he was folding the Eagle, Guildsmen at first still considered it "bluff," and continued to picket the plant. They were wrong. Schroth made clear that his decision was "irrevocable." The Eagle and its equipment were put up for sale. Schroth also has a 25-year lease for a brand-new building that the Eagle had expected to move into just before the strike started. (The building now occupied by the Eagle was bought to make way for a Brooklyn civic center.) Publisher Schroth said there was "no one in sight to buy the Eagle and bring it out again."

The death of the paper left Brooklyn without a daily of its own for the first time in more than a century. Manhattan papers promptly began to try to fill the vacuum with Brooklyn supplements and special editions. But there seemed to be few newspaper jobs in Manhattan for the Eagle's 630 staffers on the editorial and mechanical side. Said Publisher Schroth: "The Newspaper Guild presents a malignant problem. This same thing goes on year after year until death comes."

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