The Press: Strike Symptoms

What happens to a major city without its newspapers? As Detroit entered the fourth week of the strike that has shut down its three big dailies, these were some of the effects:

¶ Church attendance zoomed beyond the rosiest hopes of churchmen. Said one minister frankly: "Some of the laggards in my congregation awake on Sunday morning, grope blindly for the Sunday paper and, unable to find it, decide that the only other profitable Sunday morning activity is a visit to church."

¶ Unable to advertise spot items, used-car dealers reported a steep drop in business. Christmas trade was brisk in retail shops, but many stores fell below last year's figures or barely matched them.

¶ Stockbrokers and bookies got 50% more telephone calls.

¶ Radio advertising shot up 30%, TV ads 20%.

¶ Two major department stores began handing out their own daily advertising handbills to customers as they entered (total circ. 150,000). One chain distributed its own full-dress, four-page newspaper to 100,000 customers a day.

¶ There was no place for a birth or marriage announcement—but undertakers managed to get death notices into the Reporter (circ. 100,000), the eight-page daily published by newspaper unions.

¶ Junk dealers who collect old papers gloomed as collections fell off drastically, and local paper mills began buying out of town. But at the Department of Public Works, an official crowed happily: "We're off 25% in our wastepaper collections."