Replay Sonntag, 22. September 1991

At Many Papers, Competition Is At Best an Illusion

Date: 22 September 1991

By Alex S. Jones

Alex Jones

IN a sad reflection of the hard economic times for newspapers, four venerable afternoon papers, in Richmond and Roanoke, Va., San Diego and Charleston, S.C., have recently announced that they will soon join the legion of departed afternoon dailies. The afternoon paper in Newport News was merged into the morning paper in late August. Their demise is illustrative of a newspaper landscape that is being steadily transformed by decades of pressure from rival media and a national life style that has altered reading habits. Some of the changes are evident in figures that show a drop in the total number of newspapers. But some important breaks with the past are concealed by statistics: in a signficant number of cities, for instance, what seem to be two separate newspapers are actually products of the same reporting staff, with minimal differences in news content. The most dramatic change in the last two decades is the decline in the number of communities with competing papers.

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Zeke and the Guys Get P.R. Pointers

Date: 23 September 1991

By Gerald Eskenazi

Gerald Eskenazi

Facing the unpleasant possibility that the 1990 LISA OLSON case -- in which Olson, a female reporter was sexually harassed by members of the New England Patriots -- may be a mirror of how other players perceive women in the locker room, the National Football League has tried to make the athletes more sensitive to the news media. Every player has received an audio cassette tape detailing how to act during an interview. The players also have a vest-pocket card for "emergencies" (like a middle-of-the-night phone interview). The kit was prepared by a media specialist, KATHLEEN HESSERT . Her do's include: "Praise teammates. -- Every great running back needs a good offensive line." A key don't: "Don't talk big bucks -- Sports is big business. Don't encourage talk of the large sums of money. The average fan does not identify with million-dollar payouts."

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Review/Television; Questions Abound In the Case Of Noriega

Date: 23 September 1991

By Walter Goodman

Walter Goodman

CNN's busy special assignment branch has come up with a report on America's dealings with Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega that is not likely to add to the foreign policy luster of the Reagan-Bush Administration. "The General's Price: The Full Story," which was first shown about a week ago, can be seen beginning tonight in four installments of about 15 minutes each on the cable channel's 6 P.M. news program. It is more solid than the fare usually provided by the competing local news shows. Timed to coincide with the Miami drug trial of the former Panamanian strongman, the program goes back to the years when, as the evening's reporter, John Camp, recalls, General Noriega was considered "Washington's man in Panama." He was courted by American intelligence services despite suspicions that he was chronically corrupt. Richard M. Helms, a former Director of Central Intelligence, puts it pithily: "He's a bum." The pictures of General Noriega, which serve as a backdrop to much of the report, make him look like the heavy in a B movie.

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Abroad at Home; Power and Pettiness

Date: 23 September 1991

By Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

One of the mysteries of government is why those who have official power try so often to extend it in unnecessary directions. In doing so they may be distracted from their real problems, they may run into controversy, but still they press on. An example is at hand here in San Francisco: a petty one, and the more telling for its pettiness. It involves officials of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, one of their inmates and The San Francisco Chronicle. The inmate is Dannie Martin, a bank robber. In 1986 he sent The Chronicle an article about life in the Federal penitentiary in Lompoc, Calif. The paper edited it, put his byline on and used the piece in its Sunday Punch feature section.

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Review/Theater; Nuclear Disasters In the Name Of Science

Date: 23 September 1991

By Stephen Holden

Stephen Holden

Now that the cold war has eased, collective fears of nuclear catastrophe may have abated. But as accidents like the ones at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island have shown, war isn't the only avenue to nuclear nightmare. And "Accident: A Day's News," a play based on a short novel by the German author Christa Wolf, offers a reminder that the unthinkable disasters still loom. The one-hour performance piece, which plays at the Theater for the New City through Sunday, is a meditation on the meltdown at Chernobyl that blends diary excerpts, puppetry, music and scientific lore into a kind of personalized science fiction. Performed on a set of movable panels depicting the inside of a nuclear reactor, the piece intersperses the reflections of a character called the Writer (Jody Moore) with depictions of a nuclear scientist undergoing brain surgery. The scientist is represented by a Bunraku-style puppet manipulated by Stephen Kaplin. An atmospheric cool-jazz-flavored score composed and performed by Ralph Denzer, who plays a synthesizer and muted trumpet, accompanies the action.

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San Diego Daily Fades as Market Outgrows It

Date: 23 September 1991

The letters in Neil Morgan's mailbox come from all over California, expressing dismay over the loss of an "old friend." Mr. Morgan, the editor of the soon-to-be-closed San Diego Tribune read one aloud in his office: "I'm sorry I wrote some critical and not-nice remarks to your paper some months ago. But The Tribune, to me, was the very best publication always. And who has time to read a morning paper?"

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Books of The Times; Times v. Sullivan: A First Amendment Battle

Date: 23 September 1991

By Robert D. Sack

Robert

Make No Law The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment By Anthony Lewis 354 pages. Random House. $25. Based on interviews, scholarly research and unique access to the private papers of Justice William J. Brennan Jr., Anthony Lewis's "Make No Law" (the title is from the First Amendment's injunction that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press") is a landmark study of legal protection for freedom of expression. Mr. Lewis, a columnist for The New York Times, has written what seems to be not one work but three, interleaved in this compact volume.

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NEWS SUMMARY

Date: 22 September 1991

International 3-19 The Yugoslavian civil war raged on, as the separatist republic of Croatia appealed to the country's central Government in Belgrade for a "real truce." Croatia made the appeal after being battered by a harsh Yugoslavian assault. Page 1

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NEWS SUMMARY

Date: 23 September 1991

INTERNATIONAL A3-12 An ethnic dispute in the Soviet Union, between Armenia and Azerbaijan, appeared to be settled as Armenia agreed to renounce its claim to a disputed territory and enter formal negotiations on the issue. Page A1 The Czar? Sverdlovsk keeps its secrets A12

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Now the Good News Is . . .

Date: 22 September 1991

To the Editor: To add some information to "Negotiating a Severance Package" (Your Own Account, Aug. 25): in our executive search practice, we've run into executives who've been fired as many as three or four times through mergers, downsizing and corporate reorganization. These executives have managed to obtain comfortable severance payouts several times and have become millionaires as a result of their having been terminated so often.

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