A Separate Peace for Murdoch

New York City becomes at least a one-newspaper town

Australian Press Lord K. (for Keith) Rupert Murdoch did not endear himself to the Manhattan publishing establishment when, two years ago, he snapped up the New York Post, New York magazine and the Village Voice, and began remaking the Post according to his own tabloid tastes. Last week the publishers had even less reason to love Murdoch. In a move variously regarded as daring, cynical and even brilliant, the Australian broke ranks with his fellow publishers and made a separate peace with nine striking unions. His Post thus became the first major New York newspaper to hit the streets since it, the Daily News and the Times were struck almost nine weeks ago.

WELCOME BACK! shouted the Post's 110-point Page One headline, over a picture spread of the New York Yankees stepping off a plane after their 10-4 defeat by Kansas City in the second game of the American League pennant playoffs. Newspaper-starved New Yorkers, who had subsisted on a diet of generally skimpy interim strike papers, crowded around subway kiosks and street-corner newsstands to snatch up copies of the city's first real-life newspaper since Aug. 9. The first edition of 128 pages--twice as big as usual--was fat with pre-Columbus Day advertising, an eight-page news review of the 56 "lost" days and the same somewhat tacky mix of gossip, sports and crime that distinguished the prestrike Post.

What Murdoch did was to work out a "me too" deal, first with pressmen, whose walkout shut down the papers Aug. 9, then with several other unions that joined the strike against the three papers after they stopped publishing. The pact allows the Post to go to press immediately, and requires Murdoch by and large to go along with whatever settlement terms the unions can win later from the Times and the News. In exchange, Murdoch gained an important concession from the pressmen that will hold for the Post regardless of what the two other papers agree to. Under that provision, Murdoch need guarantee his pressmen only five straight-time shifts a week, a deal that he estimates could save up to $ 1 million a year in overtime. The number of shifts is central to the key issue in the pressmen's strike--how many workers are truly needed to man modern, high-speed newspaper presses --though the final answer to that question will depend on the News and Times settlements.

Murdoch was under far less economic pressure to go it alone against fellow publishers than was former Post Owner Dorothy Schiff during the 114-day strike of 1962-63. Schiff settled with the unions 28 days before the other papers, insisting that otherwise the Post would fold. Murdoch was reported to be losing up to $12 million a year on the paper before the strike, so by not publishing he may merely have been cutting his losses. Additionally, Murdoch's New York magazine and Village Voice picked up a circulation and ad revenue windfall from the strike--Voice ad pages are running about double normal levels--and some of the city's Murdoch-haters believe the man may even have turned a profit from the dispute.

Why did Murdoch break ranks? At first he was named by publishers as their negotiator--they wanted the Aussie out in the open where they could keep an eye on him. That role troubled Murdoch, especially after Theodore Kheel, the labor lawyer and supermediator, was called in by the unions, with assent from the News and the Times, to get negotiations moving when they seemed stalled. Murdoch saw Kheel less as an observer than an active arbiter, who might dictate terms inimical to the Post. "They put him out in front to take all the heat, then they cut him down from behind with Kheel," says a source close to Murdoch. "He wasn't going to do their dirty work." Feeling thus betrayed by his fellow publishers, Murdoch in turn betrayed them. That stratagem irked Kheel. Said he: "In union parlance, Murdoch is scabbing. He's looking out for himself."

Murdoch was discreetly silent about his motives last week, but there was no shortage of taproom psychoanalysis about why he went his own way. It had been said that he would make permanent the New York Daily Metro, a strike paper he financed, then fold the Post and go after the morning markets controlled by the Times and the News. Yet the Metro died the day the Post resumed publishing. Still, Murdoch men are not ruling out a future morning tabloid, probably along the lines of his spicy and sensational London Sun. It was also said that Murdoch rushed into print as a prelude to turning the Post into a so-called all-day paper, churning out editions around the clock. Post executives counter by saying the Post virtually does that already; its first edition normally goes to press at 7:40 a.m. and its last hits the streets at 3:30 p.m.

Grand and nefarious schemes aside, one of Murdoch's most powerful incentives for settling early is the galleys upon galleys of Columbus Day advertising that the Post carried in its first post-strike" editions--so many ads, that over the weekend the Post emerged with its first Sunday edition, which may become a fixture when all the city's presses are rolling again.

That may happen as early as this week, or as late as next month. With Maverick Murdoch back on the streets, pressure is increased on the Times and the News to resume publishing. But those newspapers seem determined to strive for a long-term solution to the press-manning issue. Says a Times executive: "The achievement of our objective is of overriding importance." All well and good. But because of Murdoch's "me-tooism," the other papers find themselves in the odd position of negotiating for him over the roar of his presses and the jingle of his advertising revenue.

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