Modern Times

It is an old joke on Fleet Street that the owners of Britain's newspapers may come and go but it is the unions that run the show. And a costly show it is. Fleet Street has been plagued for years by strikes, late press runs and overstaffing. Except for the Sun, a screeching Rupert Murdoch tabloid, most London papers are either losing money or making minuscule profits.

No wonder then that Fleet Street's proprietors are trying to pare expenses by modernizing plants and cutting work forces. One owner whose efforts foundered is Lord Hartwell, whose family has run the Daily Telegraph (circ. 1.2 million) since 1928. In June Hartwell assembled a $156 million package to pay for both modern printing plants and severance for hundreds of his workers. Faced with a money squeeze this month, Hartwell sold a 35% stake to Hollinger Argus, Ltd., a Toronto-based mining firm owned mostly by Conrad Black, a Canadian tycoon whose holdings range from radio stations to supermarkets. Black, who had acquired 14% of the shares in June, ended up winning control of the paper. Though Hartwell remains chairman and editor in chief, Black has appointed Andrew Knight, the editor of the Economist, as the paper's chief executive. During Knight's eleven years at the helm of that esteemed British weekly, circulation doubled to 275,000.

Many of Fleet Street's newspapers, including the Telegraph, plan to occupy larger offices and computerized plants in east London's docklands area beginning next year. Murdoch, who also owns the Times, had hoped to move his Sun and News of the World there this fall, but union intransigence delayed the plans. Robert Maxwell, head of the Mirror Group of newspapers, has been more persuasive. After threatening to shut down his papers, Maxwell announced that the unions had agreed to lay off one-third of his newspaper group's 6,000 staffers. All eyes now are on Eddie Shah, a feisty publisher of newspapers in northern England who plans to launch a national, computer-printed tabloid this spring. By signing a no-strike contract with the electricians' union and skirting other unions, Shah boasts that his expenses will be a small fraction of Fleet Street's. If Shah's paper, Today, is a success, his fellow proprietors are likely to applaud him as much as they curse the added competition.