Newspapers: Slow-Motion Merger in New York

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At the New York World-Telegram and Sun, morale is down in the dumps. Editor Richard Peters has gone on vacation, and staffers doubt that he will return to work. One staffer after an other has left for another job. At the Journal-American, reporters are calculating their seniority and worrying about whether they can survive a merger. The word is out that peripatetic Editor John Denson is getting ready to move once more. In the city room of the Herald Tribune, reporters long hardened to the possibility that the paper itself might not survive are beginning to nurse a new nervousness that was not eased three weeks ago, when Managing Editor Murray Weiss took off for Boston and a position as assistant to the publisher of the Herald-Traveler.

On all three papers, the reason for the unpleasant uncertainty is the same: persistent and well-founded rumors of an imminent merger between the daily World-Telegram and the Journal-American and between the Sunday Trib and the Sunday Journal. Last week, concern over such a consolidation was heightened by reports on TV and radio, and in the Wall Street Journal. Some commentators even suggested that the final plans had been sent to Washington for Justice Department approval. They had not. The precise date of the slow-motion merger, which has been in the works for three years, remains a mystery. But its eventual consummation seems inevitable.

Sunday Polyglot. "Jock Whitney is in the Bahamas," said a Hearst spokesman. "Bill Hearst is in Florida, and he's going to San Francisco from there. I don't think there would be a merger without those two around, do you?" Probably not, but all indications are that Whitney, Hearst and the World-Telegram's Jack Howard have finally got down to business and hammered out agreement on issues from staff to space allotment. Hearst's Frank Conniff is slated to be editor of the afternoon paper; two-thirds of the present Journal-Telegram staffs will be kept. The paper will be printed on the Telegram's 35-year-old presses, which are only slightly less obsolete than the Journal's. The polyglot Sunday Tribune-Journal (or whatever its name is to be) will be printed on both Trib and Journal presses.

In New York, says Herald Tribune President Walter Thayer, "three papers are losing a great deal of money." He means the Trib, Telegram and Journal. A combination of television, strong suburban dailies and crippling strikes has drained those papers of readers and advertisers. Circulation of the WorldTelegram has dropped from 448,828 in 1960 to 389,291 today; in the same period, Journal-American circulation slipped from 618,802 to 535,310. The Sunday Trib (circ. 360,876), though it has been praised for its sprightliness, has been unable to make much headway against the powerful Sunday Times, with its impressive circulation of 1,337,-277. Last year the three papers lost a combined $12 million; this year they stand to lose $15 million.