National Reports
MARKHAM, PETER
NATIONAL REPORTS Strike Threatens to Make Portland One-Paper City By Peter Markham PORTLAND, ORE. THIS CITY is really a Yankee town set amid the snow-covered Cascades and the scenic Columbia...
...Founded by Henry L. Pittock about a century ago, when the state entered the Union, the Oregonian remained in the Pittock family's control until 1949, when the heirs put it on the market...
...Thus, until the strike began, the Oregonian remained essentially unchanged from pre-New-house days...
...All the craft unions refused to cross the picket lines, leaving management with no experienced help except for the managerial staff of the two papers...
...The ostensible reason for the strike was the stereotypere' refusal to agree on the number of men required to operate a new machine (which hasn't even been purchased) and on some fringe benefits...
...What gives this strike more than ordinary interest is the background of the newspaper business in Portland...
...The Journal is also a venerable hometown institution, but it lacks the Oregonian's brilliant staff of reporters and photographers...
...But the two managements, which normally feud bitterly with each other, joined forces to produce a single paper, the Oregonian-Journal...
...But close observers of the scene feel that Newhouse deliberately precipitated the strike— partly in order to break the unions, but mainly to undermine the Journal and force it to capitulate to his drive for control...
...The Oregonian s brilliant photographers are no longer producing news pictures...
...Because of the dimout on strike news, the unions have had to buy TV time to tell their story, but thus far to no avail...
...THIS CITY is really a Yankee town set amid the snow-covered Cascades and the scenic Columbia River...
...Most of the Guild members predict a long strike and the Journal's demise, which would naturally entail the foreclosure of many newspapermen's jobs...
...Desiring only profit from the paper, he leaves everything as is...
...The Oregonian is the best-known and in many ways the best-written and -edited paper in the Pacific Northwest...
...It is actually just a little above the tabloid level with a lower-middle-class appeal, and it is understood to have been in financial trouble recently...
...It is said that the new proprietor, Samuel I. Newhouse, who made himself a national newspaper tycoon from a start as publisher of a small Long Island daily, bought the Oregonian sight unseen for a sizeable cash payment...
...Local news coverage is scant, except for what the editorial writers (who are not Guild members) can develop over the telephone...
...On November 18, the stereotypere on the morning Oregonian and the evening Journal walked out after fruitless efforts to agree on a new contract...
...And independent trucking contractors were hired to deliver the paper to newsboys and carriers...
...A newspaper strike is a phenomenon that baffles the average citizen here...
...He apparently hasn't been seen in town since the day he flew in to look over his new property...
...Except, possibly, for the San Francisco Chronicle, it is the most informative and literate paper on the West Coast...
...This would enable him to control the most important advertising medium in Oregon and Washington, for the Oregonian blankets much of both states...
...And the editorial page is a composite of the nationally syndicated columns normally carried by the two papers...
...Unlike William Randolph Hearst, who used his newspaper empire as a sounding-board for his views...
...Newhouse's opinions are unknown to the people who work for him...
...It is staid, slow-moving, conservative and, on the whole, a good place to live...
...Most of the union people thought the sympathy strike would prevent the papers from publishing...
...It was founded by men from Maine —hence its name—and has never lost its New England flavor...
...Newhouse operates his newspaper, magazine and radio-TV empire from New York...
...and its editorials, despite their Republican slant, are well written and generally accurate...
...This had been carefully prepared for months ahead, through a contract with an Indiana strike-breaking organization to import scabs from the South and the Middle West to run the linotypes, man the presses, make the stereotypes, engrave the photographs and mail the paper...
...It has been no secret that New-house desires to acquire control of the Journal and merge it with the Oregonian, thus adding Portland to the growing list of one-paper cities...
...He seems to be the new type of mass media entrepreneur who deals with his "properties" as investments, and seems to have neither the inclination nor perhaps the talent to influence their policies...
...With all members of the Newspaper Guild on strike, the hybrid paper consists largely of wire news, wire photos and advertisements...
...He is so accustomed to labor peace, except perhaps in the raucous wood-working industries, that the picketing of the town's two newspapers, and signs reading "Scabs Go Home," leave him more or less bewildered...
Vol. 43 • January 1960 • No. 1
