No Compromise

In six weeks on the picket line at Scripps-Howard's New York World-Telegram & Sun, Reporter Joan Gahan, 24, had worn out three pairs of shoes. Last week, as she has done since the C.I.O. Newspaper Guild's strike began at the third biggest evening newspaper in the U.S. (circ. 612,468), Newshen Gahan took her two-hour daily turn. As the pickets ambled in circles at the newspaper's three entrances, some worked puzzles, read papers, or played "20 Questions."

Across the street, little knots of printers, pressmen and stereotypers watched passively, still refusing to cross the lines. Occasionally, the ugly cry of "Scab!" went up as a nonstriking editorial or business staffer darted into the dark, gloomy recesses of the W-T & S. A picket dangled a SCAB sign over a nonstriker while a photographer snapped him for the strikers' daily, two-page Guild Telegram & Sun. After their stint, Joan and some other pickets fanned out to cover their regular W-T & S beats for the strikers' 15-minute daily "radio newspaper," Seven Star Final, on three New York stations five nights a week. Once a week, strikers dropped into headquarters, in a doll factory, to collect benefits of $25 and up.

Books for Shut-Ins. Upstairs in the big, quiet city room, ranks of empty desks lay thick with dust, unopened mail and yellowing copy paper. Here & there an editorial writer clipped the New York Times for future reference, and a copyreader dutifully counted out a headline on a filler story that would probably never run. In the new, five-hour day, one man had finished reading half a dozen novels.

In a mediation session last week, the W-T & S management offered job security and union security clauses like those in the New York Times contract. The Guild replied that it would accept the entire Times contract, but not just its "worst features." Management withdrew its offer. It also took a full-page ad in the Times, restating Editor Roy W. Howard's objection to any kind of editorial Guild shop as "prejudicial to . . . objectivity . . ."

Early Bird. In the impasse, New Yorkers, thirsting for war news, lapped up Hearst's Journal-American, and the tabloid Post. Wall Streeters were also sending out for the Newark (N.J.) News, the only nearby afternoon paper that prints the complete stock market tables. All that the W-T & S could offer were daily sports broadcasts with this hopeful commercial: "Brought to you by the New York World-Telegram and Sun--a newspaper worth waiting for." --

For seven months, Guildsmen had been picketing the Little Rock Arkansas Gazette in a strike for a job security clause. Unlike their W-T & S brothers, the Arkansas pickets had failed to persuade the craft unions to honor their lines. As a result, the Gazette, with a new staff, last week was publishing as usual; its circulation was almost as big as when the strike started (97,847), its advertising bigger.

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