The Press: News by Computer

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Since August, the paper's writing and editing have been carried out on a modified version of the A.P.-Hendrix CRT. Gone from the newsroom is the clattering of typewriters. The loudest sounds now are the occasional howls from reporters still baffled by their futuristic machines. A CRT has 47 more keys than the standard typewriter, such as ETX (end of text). Thus the possibilities for fumble-fingered writing errors have multiplied. One of those keys, the "kill" button, even whisks the story off the screen and erases it from computer memory. (The News has nine new computers, capable of storing 3,000,000 words.) When stories began vanishing into electronic limbo, the News was forced to modify its CRTS so that the "kill" button must be hit twice before a story dies.

Though some reporters and desk-men complain about adjustment problems, News executives are certain that their investment will pay off in increased efficiency and better distribution. Once stories are edited in the newsroom, computers transmit them to the printing plant, set type photographically at 300 lines a minute and partially control the operation of six new three-story-high presses. The changes mean that late-breaking stories can get into the paper 15 minutes before press time, as compared with the hour required previously.

Resistance by craft unions has been the biggest obstacle to newspaper automation. The News has no Newspaper Guild representation and is now in arbitration with the typographers' union over details of the changes, but labor problems continue to inhibit automation at many big papers, like the New York Times. Several smaller publishers are trying the changes and liking them. The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle (circ. 50,448) and its sister evening Herald (circ. 19,277) began installing CRTS a year ago, now have ten in operation and ten more ordered. Chronicle Managing Editor Robert Brown points out that his CRT gives him instantaneous access to any story in the office.

One kink in the system, Brown adds, is that everyone wants to type on the CRTs: "A copy boy one night was writing a message on one about going across town to see a friend. He didn't know it, but he was adding a paragraph to a story and it got in the paper."