IT DIDN'T FIT TO PRINT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP73-00475R000400280001-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 17, 2013
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 17, 1965
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT NEWSWEEK'
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/12/17: CIA-RDP73-00475R000400280001-3
ITIPti NOD
It Didn't Fit to Print
Treating both publishers and union
leaders with clinical impartiality, the
editors of The New York Times two
years ago turned over more than seven-
teen columns to the paper's labor ex-
pert, A.H. Raskin, for a sharply critical
account of union-management fumbling
' during the New York 'City newspaper
strike of 1962-63. Among other things,
! Raskin referred to the "icy disdain" and
"imperiousness" of Amory H. Bradford,
the Times vice president and chief ne-
gotiator for the city's publishers. For
his uncompromising account, Raskin won
no less than four awards, and not long
after the piece, Bradford resigned from
the Times.
Still fumbling, New York's newspapers
and their unions narrowly managed to
, avert another strike this spring. The set-
tlement, however, was needlessly high
and dismally failed to resolve the critical
' issue of automation.
Again, the Times asked Raskin for a
piece. But when he handed in his 8,000-
word appraisal?enough to fill more than
eight columns?it was spiked. "We had
ordered a 'News Analysis' piece of not
more than two columns," says Times
managing editor Clifton. Daniel. "In view
of the fact that we covered the nego-
tiations extensively and no strike took
; place, we didn't feel our readers needed
such an exhaustive review." The 54-
year-old Raskin, now assistant editor of
! the Times editorial page, disagrees.
"Our readers got the facts after the
' 1962-63 strike," he says. "I felt they,
, should have gotten them this time, too.
? 'Struggle': Some readers did get
Raskin's retrospective last week. He
shortened it by some 1,500 words and
sold it to the Saturday Review, which
billed it as the "inside report on a .
struggle for survival." "The publishers? of
New York's major newspapers and the
ten unions with which they bargain," it
began, "have just given another impres-
? sive object lesson in how not to conduct
labor-management relations." Raskin
supported this indictment with example
upon example of bargaining ineptitude
on the part of both the unions and man-
agement. At one point, the printers and
the publishers could not even agree on
the language for shelving the automa-
tion issue. "No convention of philolo-
gists," wrote Raskin, "could have carried
the discussion into more arcane bypaths,
and most of the arguing was done by
the publishers among themselves." The
publishers bickered constantly, wrote
Raskin, over how much to concede to
the unions and the Times "almost always .'
[was] the target of most criticism for
surrendering too readily."
But Raskin's most telling point was
made by quoting the head of one union
who told him: "The newspapers of New
York ... know just what to do about
Vietnam, or the balance of payments, or
crime in the subways. The only prob-
lems they?don't know how to solve are
their own." ?
,
?
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2013/12/17: CIA-RDP73-00475R000400280001-3