Press: Return of the Thunderer

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The Times newspapers put their pretax losses at better than $60 million but insisted that the lockout was the only way to ensure the future of the two publications. If the papers do survive, said Lord Thomson of Fleet, chairman of the parent company, "the cost staff-wise, money-wise and frustration-wise will have been worth it." As for Fleet Street's reaction, Times executives dismissed it as sniping by envious competitors. Said one Timesman: "They're in a position of being overmanned and using 19th century technology, and they see a slimmed-down Times striding into the 21st century."

During the long shutdown, the 400 or so Times journalists reported to the office twice a week, covered their beats as best they could and worked on long-term stories. Some two dozen Timesmen busied themselves writing books, others freelanced for magazines, but none completely escaped the ennui that afflicts a newspaperman suddenly without a newspaper. "I feel like a frog in the winter," Times Foreign Editor Charles Douglas-Home said at one point. "All horizons have contracted. Things continue to function, but at a tiny percent of efficiency."

Readers were similarly bereft. Cross word-puzzle skills grew rusty, the spring's first cuckoo went unrecorded, and almost no one knew the name of the new captain of fives at Eton. The Times's famous letters-to-the-editor column was missed perhaps most of all. There was simply no other place to debate, as Times readers once did, how to keep one's hand warm in bed while reading (a concerned citizen's suggestion: slits in the bedclothes). Commented an Observer contributor last winter: "For those who were hooked on the Times, there is clearly no substitute. There is quiet, uncomprehending, slow-bubbling rage about its disappearance."

Gaining circulation during the Times's absence were the other "quality" national newspapers: the Daily Telegraph (up 89,000, to 1.5 million), the Guardian (up 103,000, to 415,000) and the Sunday

Observer (up an impressive 572,961, to 1,278,819). But the returning papers are buoyed by reader surveys that predict a wholesale return of the faithful when the Times resumes on Nov. 13 and the Sunday Times on Nov. 18. To entice them, the Times is planning to spend between $2 million and $4 million on a promotional blitz. It also will publish special eight-page supplements on major issues of the past year, on developments in the arts and on books. For the record, there will be three eight-page obituary supplements. The Sunday Times, which bought serialization rights to Henry Kissinger's memoirs more than a year ago, will finally be able to print them. No other new wrinkles are contemplated, however. Says Times Editor William Rees-Mogg: ''What people want is the Times back. We'll produce the Times as it was, without change.''