Mary Jane Seltzer

Illustration of man not reading newspaper

The San Diego Evening Tribune is not averse to hollering at its audience. Its “green sheet” street edition shouts about something perilous in the world nearly every day. But the Tribune really hits stride when a major catastrophe strikes. Its editors aren’t afraid to break out the exclamation points. Odds are that you knew of the PSA crash last September 25 before you saw the headline in the Tribune (which was on the streets two and a half hours after North Park exploded) reading, “MIDAIR DISASTER! Flaming Jet Hits Houses; PSA 727 Carried 134.” You also probably knew of the sniping at Cleveland Elementary School January 29 before you saw the headline, “SNIPER TERROR! Principal Slain At School Here; Eight Injured.” (The magnitude and horror of those events and the task of covering them quickly may excuse the Tribune for having missed the count of victims by one in both cases; there were 135 people on the doomed jetliner and nine persons injured by the sniper.)

You aren’t likely to be one of the 100,000 people who subscribe to San Diego’s only metropolitan afternoon daily, or one of the 30,000 who regularly buy it off the street, but you may have been seduced by the sight of an exclamation point in boldface headlines and plugged your fifteen cents into a machine the day of at least one of the disasters. Fifteen thousand more papers were sold each of those two days than on a normal Monday. And therein lies the Tribune’s strength as well as its weakness. Spectacular, late-breaking news is the paper’s mainstay, and it is just about the only thing our afternoon newsmen can count on to increase circulation. But stories that can do justice to an exclamation point in the headlines are rare.

The Tribune’s circulation today (130,665) is only 5000 more than it was in 1960. By contrast, its morning sister, the Union (circulation 199,474), added 92,000 readers in that same nineteen-year interval. Still, one might contend, as the Tribune’s executives do, that the paper is bucking the national trend for afternoon dailies. Generally, these newspapers have been losing circulation for the past twenty years, and many have shut down entirely. Just up the road, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner has been anguishing over its plummeting afternoon sales—from 775,000 in 1962 to about 325,000 today. Last May the struggling Chicago Daily Newsfinally succumbed and left that city without an afternoon newspaper. Only four years before that, another of the city’s afternoon papers, Chicago Today, closed its doors. In 1976 the Hartford Times (Connecticut) folded, and in 1970 the Chattanooga Evening Post was ordered closed by the Justice Department, which determined that the paper was willfully being operated at a loss and thus presented unfair competition to other Chattanooga publications. Elsewhere, in New York City, Boston, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Cleveland, afternoon papers have attempted to survive by means of mergers with other papers, sometimes combining to publish several editions, morning and evening, under one masthead.

The Tribune is a survivor so far, though that’s probably due more to the paper’s cozy advertising relationship with the Union (in effect, they share advertising) than anything else. But the accelerated population growth of San Diego County has also been a factor. The number of people living here has nearly quadrupled since 1960. Partly because of that. Tribune editors and staffers feel, perhaps improbably, that there’s plenty of room to expand the paper’s readership. “If I were editor of the second horse. I’d plead that we need a little more attention to catch up [to the Union ],” muses columnist and Tribune associate editor Neil Morgan. How would he do it? “Some overscale [pay], hiring a few more experienced hands, a little severance pay.” However, Morgan also acknowledges the dilemma faced by nearly all afternoon news executives. “But I don’t know if it would increase circulation. That’s what's frustrating. I can’t find parallel curves between the quality of the Tribune and its circulation. No one yet has found the formula for afternoon newspapers.”

This is evident in the circulation figures for the forty-two major metropolitan afternoon dailies now publishing in the U.S. In the last six months, twenty-eight of them have declined in circulation. The Tribune is among the fourteen that climbed in numbers. Since March of 1978 it has added about 2000 readers, though nobody can say exactly why. The Tribune, it seems, is not in control of its own destiny. It is a condition illustrated by the fact that most people probably knew of the midair collision before they saw the Tribune that day, and they knew of it through radio or television, which broadcasted the news minutes after the crash. “You hear the things going on during the day,” comments Frank Hill, circulation manager of the Union-Tribune. (The only department that is separate for the Union and the Tribune is editorial; everything else, including advertising, circulation, accounting, and even the staff of photographers, is shared by both papers.) “Years ago the Tribune was a working man’s paper,” Hill says. “He went to work at seven a.m. in the aircraft factories and didn’t have time to read a morning paper. He’d pick up a fresh paper on his way home. There weren’t as many nine-to-five people in those days.” Today, the working man would probably rather wait until he gets home to find out about the day’s occurrences from television news, if he’s interested in the news at all; or wait until the next morning, when he probably has time to read the Union . “It’s the competition with what the reader has to do with his time, ” says Tribune managing editor Walt Miller.

The Tribune, however, hasn't had any metropolitan daily newspaper competition since the San Diego Journal closed down in 1948. Today the Tribune’s competition is something less concrete. It’s the leisure ethic, rooted in the clement weather, which in the summer and on most winter days beckons the after-work crowd to the beach, the Little League field, the jogging path. The lifestyle also partakes of copious amounts of television, though the Tribune’s flagging readership isn’t necessarily watching the evening news. Studies show that those who watch television news are likely to read a newspaper as well. The booming movie theater trade is another manifestation of the lifestyle; San Diegans are among the most frequent moviegoers in the country. Sports franchises and their college counterparts are having difficulties scheduling their games in the evening, too, with all the other activities trying to gobble peoples’ leisure time. The early evening has become a battleground of competing interests, and the lowly afternoon paper has been slipping down the list of our priorities. Add to this the clogged state of the freeways in the late afternoon, which makes prompt delivery of the Tribune increasingly difficult, and you have part of the reason the paper has hooked only 5000 of the 661,789 people who’ve been added to San Diego County since 1960.

For the Tribune’s shepherds, all this translates into bafflement. What can you do when a study of 500 Tribune readers who stopped taking the paper reveals that they simply don’t have time to read it? Other studies have been done, but they aren’t much help. Says Tribune editor Fred Kinne, “If you could wave a magic wand and produce a product that they had to read before they went to the ballgame, had to read before they had their dinner, had to read before they went jogging, or right after—that’s what we’re striving for. We’ve gotta improve the product. ’’ Kinne and others agree that improvement would be facilitated if they knew what their readers wanted to see, but that requires surveys, and as managing editor Walt Miller says, “The problem with surveys is they reinforce your suspicions about reader-ship, anyway. They’re telling us the same things about what people want as they did thirty years ago—crime, sex, violence.’’ So the process has been turned inward. The executives have begun to hold meetings with the 135 newsroom employees, who are encouraged to speak freely about the paper and also about what they think people want to read.

Editor Kinne also feels the Tribune must follow its constituency out to the suburbs. Afternoon dailies, which prior to 1960 dominated the newspaper industry (according to one recent study, they still account for more than half the daily metropolitan circulation nationally), have traditionally been strongest in downtown areas. And they’ve traditionally been street papers. This was partly because the central city was where the population was concentrated, and before the days of television, afternoon papers supplied the day’s breaking-news coverage. (In San Diego, the Tribune had a larger circulation than the Union as late as 1965.) But population density has now shifted away from the center city toward the outlying areas. ‘ ‘We ’ve got to go into North County more, East County more—this is where our circulation must and probably can build,’’ explains Kinne. “But we run into the problem of really good community papers in Escondido and Oceanside. [The Escondido Times-Advocate and the Oceanside Blade-Tribune, both with circulations of about 25,000.] It's hard for us to compete with a local [community] afternoon newspaper. They can expend so much more of their space in covering local news. We have to give ’em just really the highlights, plus what we can do that those papers can’t. They’re doing a good job; they're tough competition. ’’ The Tribune’s North County circulation is 19,000—16,000 at the doorstep and 3000 on the street. The Union sells 45,000 in North County—6,000 of them on the street.

The Tribune’s twenty-year drift in the circulation doldrums naturally gives rise to questions about where the Copley corporation is channeling its efforts here. Sometime in the early 1950s. publisher Jim Copley saw that the future lay paved with morning papers, and as a result, the Union got more attention than the Tribune. It’s not that vast amounts of money were poured into the Union , but that no great effort was made to fortify the Tribune against the recognized impending threat to afternoon papers. “At one time, around 1950, when the Union was at fifty or sixty thousand circulation, there was a concerted effort to boost it, “ recalls Kinne. “I think probably there was [such an effort] until they got ahead of us. And sometimes we feel there is now, but we don’t have any real . . . you know. They tell us there isn’t, but sometimes we feel there is.” Frank Hill, the circulation manager, vehemently denies that the Union gets more push than the Tribune. “I’m after every subscription I can get,” he says. “I live and die on those [circulation] figures.” Hill adds that his department spends about thirty percent more on promotion of the Tribune than it does on the Union . Though he won’t be precise, that means there are “near forty” solicitors on the streets seeking subscriptions for the Tribune, as opposed to twenty-five soliciting for the Union , according to Hill.

Aside from the problems of competing for peoples ’ attention in the early evenings, the Tribune is also strapped because it has much less time than the Union does to reach its distribution areas. The first of the Tribune’s three editions is on the streets about 11:30 a.m. The home edition goes to press at 1:00 p.m. and is on its way to the carrier boys between 2:30 and 3:30, toward the eventual rendezvous with the front steps between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. The final edition, or green sheet, which is sold only on the street (and is the only edition using green paper on its front page), goes to press at 2:50 p.m. and is on the street by about 3:30. The requirement that the paper be in the racks before people leave work and on their doorsteps before dinner time necessarily limits the area in which the paper can be distributed. Morning papers can be carted much farther than evening papers. The Union 's first edition is loaded onto trucks about midnight, so its market can extend to places like El Centro, Borrego, Elsinore, Temecula, Sun City, San Clemente, and Rosarito Beach in Baja. It’s even trying to get 250copies out to Yuma, Arizona. The Tribune is in none of those places.

But all these handicaps still don’t add up to a dire situation for the Tribune. It has escaped the fate of its deceased and ailing brethren primarily because the advertising revenue continues to pour in. This is partly because the Tribune has no other afternoon metropolitan daily to compete with for advertising accounts. But the main reason is the Tribune doesn’t have to rely solely on its own circulation to lure advertisers. Nearly all the ads bought in the local Copley Press appear in both papers, and the advertising rates are structured in such a way as to make it foolhardy not to. For instance, roughly a quarter-page ad, four columns by ten inches, under the contract rate cost s $616 for the Tribune only. For the ad to run in both newspapers, the cost is $795. This means that for $179 an advertiser is buying the 199,000 copies of the Union . It’s almost impossible to pass up. Small wonder the rate card lists the combination rates First and then the “optional one-paper rates.” For classified ads there’s not even a choice of one paper or the other; the classifieds are identical every day for both papers. This advertising association between the papers blurs, even distorts, the Tribune’s true financial performance. According to a veteran newsman close to the situation, however, even if the Tribune were known to be a money loser, Copley executives would continue its publication simply to discourage possible afternoon competition.

Still, its $3.5 million editorial budget is closely tied to its circulation figures; and in its sometimes awkward efforts to increase those figures, it is like other afternoon dailies—it has juggled its format, its talent, its graphics, and the priority it assigns to various types of news. In that ambition it has pleased some of its staff members and alienated others. Says one particularly bitter reporter, “Things don’t work logically in a town with one newspaper. It’s a captive market. Because there’s no competition, the jobs of the people in charge are not put in peril. It’s not important for a city editor or managing editor to be on top of things and do a good 'job. You can do it tomorrow because the circulation isn’t going to drop. We could tomorrow stop all local news coverage, the mayor could be murdered [without the incident being covered], and forget it— Safeway will still advertise with us.” As an example of the Tribune’s complacency, the reporter points out that it was six days after the discovery of a pod of beached sperm whales in the Sea of Cortez before the paper got around to sending reporter Joe Hughes down to cover the story. Also, the Tribune neglected to investigate the Church of Hakeem (currently being prosecuted by local authorities for alleged fundraising irregularities) while the churchmen were here in early January recruiting followers. Reporter Bob Dorn was sent to San Francisco to do the story in late January. He turned it in January 29, but it didn’t appear until February 20.

If the paper has been complacent in its news coverage, there has been much activity of another sort. Between April and December of 1978, the Tribune conducted an experiment with page B-1, traditionally the page containing local news. During that time, most of the local news was confined to page A-3, and what didn't fit there was scattered pell-mell throughout the rest of the section. Page B-1 was transformed into a showcase spot—every day one story took up the entire page. All concerned—editors, reporters, and executives—now acknowledge that the experiment was a failure. “Basically, [last April] we boosted the feature-writing core, thought we could produce day after day tremendously important and darn good features,” explains assistant managing editor Dick Eby during a roundtable discussion with Tribune editor Fred Kinne, managing editor Walt Miller, and assistant managing editor George Dissinger. “It was an attempt. We tried, gave it darn good play, but it just didn’t work,” Eby admits. “There were just not that many good ones. ’’ Managing editor Walt Miller adds, “We put nine people on the ‘advance team ’ and charged them with getting the story that you can’t read in any other newspaper. This was gonna be our sales pitch to the community. We were gonna have something fresh, different, original.”

Among the stories that received the full-page treatment were those headlined, “Slalom Drivers Are Regular Folks,” “The Bus Stops Here “(about a rural bus), and “Psst! Wanna Stuff a VW Full of Popcorn?” The latter story concerned itself with “party supplying and allied fields of fun, food, and drink—such as supplying candy to movie houses—a growing business in San Diego.”

Recalls Miller, “In order to produce enough copy to fill that page every day, nine people were up to their ass just getting the story out. Coupled with that problem, you display with the same weight every story on that page. ” This damaged reader-ship of the page. Tribune executives agree, because readers could not use the story’s big play as a measure of its significance. “They get burned four times in a row with mediocre stories,” says Eby, “then the fifth story’s a good one and they don’t read it ’cause they been burned four times. ” In conferences with the reporters and editors, instituted in November, the managers found that almost to a man, B-1 was considered a flop. Further, it was affecting morale because it was perceived to be damaging the paper’s image.

By midsummer the editors suspected they were on the wrong track, but it was several months before any change was instituted. “One of the reasons we didn’t shift back sooner,” explains Eby, “was that there was some fear of going back to what the guys called the old B-1 we used to have.”

“Yeah,” groans Miller.

“See, this is where we have a city council story, board of supervisors . . . .’’Eby drones.

“Dullsville,” interjects Kinne.

“It’s what we call the city council yesterday package,” cracks Miller.

“It’s tough for us,” Eby continues. “You gotta get it in the paper, but it’s still yesterday’s stuff. So some of the guys were dreading going back to that routine. Then we got to thinking, ‘Well, news is peppier today. The town is growing, more going on, and gee, A-3 [where much of the local news had been moved] looks peppy. Why can’t B-3 look peppy?’ ” So the managers negotiated with the advertising department, which determines how many pages there will be in the paper, and secured all of B-3 for local news. In addition, B-1 dropped the one-story format and became, once again, a bona fide local-news page. The overall effect has been to make the various news sections much more coherent. Important state and national stories aren’t scattered throughout the first section, jumbled with local items as they used to be. The sections are more well defined now, and even if there is a preoccupation with crime stories, at least the local section seems to have lost the urge to feature stories about the phenomenon of reserved parking spaces, or how to make the social register.

Though it would be difficult to get any consensus from the 135 newsroom employees, the majority of the reporters and editors interviewed for this story are pleased about the change in B-1 and are encouraged by the naming of George Dis-singer to the post of assistant managing editor earlier this year. Speaking of that development in conjunction with the firing last April of Dissinger’s predecessor, Larry Lusitana, reporter Bob Dorn says, “You lift the rock and you expect everybody to come running out, but they’re still lying there, waiting for the rock to be put back down.” It’s Dissinger’s job to flush them out, and in Kinne’s words, “be the in-house ombudsman. ’’ The managers say that communication with the troops was so bad they were considering putting out an internal newsletter. “George is chatting with them about what they’d like to do in the future, where they 'd like to go, do they like their assignment or would they rather have something else,’’ says Kinne. But not everyone is ecstatic. At the beginning of January one reporter could lament, “The atmosphere of the place will drive a man to suicide.” Conversely, Barbara Hererra, editor of the “Scene” section, refers to the firing of Lusitana and the appointment of Dissinger as ‘ ‘a renaissance from the Dark Ages.” However, Neil Morgan, referring to Dissinger ascending through the ranks (he was the cigar-munching chief politics writer), observes wryly, “For a year or two before he has to fire somebody, they’ll figure, ‘He’s one of us.’ ”

The new wind blowing through the newsroom is replacing an old and apparently suffocating gas. Larry Lusitana, the former assistant managing editor, is blamed for much of the unhappiness and unrest that plagued Tribune staffers. He was known and feared for his vindictiveness. Morgan says that had he been editor he would have fired Lusitana long before April, 1978. Most of the writers feel Lusitana controlled the newsroom like an autocrat. Lusitana, on the other hand, claims it was run by committee. Morgan, in careful, measured words, says, “You gotta have a certain amount of toughness in every newsroom. But it has to be administered evenly. Larry is a brilliant newsman, but his own biases and prejudices probably outweighed his assets as far as most of the staff was concerned. He did a lot of the right things, but he lost the staff as he did them because of the way he did them. His personal relationships were often quite regrettable.”

Lusitana feels he was a scapegoat, and is now suing the Copley Press for unjust treatment in his dismissal. And one could make a good case that he’s now the whipping boy. “I’m very volatile, very definite about things,” he says, “but it’s terribly humiliating after twenty-three years that I would be the person to can. I was the key person. They tried to push the bad morale of the newspaper onto me.’’ By way of explanation for his fearsome reputation, Lusitana says, “When there was bad news, I was the one to do it. When it was good, Fred [Kinne] called them into his office to do it. ’’ Though Lusitana believes the staff got the impression the bad news emanated from him alone, he claims that “everything was done by consensus.’’ Kinne says that all personnel decisions were made in conference with himself and the other executives present. However, one reporter who still has the impression that the bad news was initiated by Lusitana is Bill Finley.

For ten years Finley had been a sports writer. Then in the spring of 1977 he was abruptly told that he was being pulled out of the sports department of the Tribune and placed under the control of the city desk as a general-assignment reporter. It was a move masterminded by Larry Lusitana, who wanted to make room for a female sports writer (Linda Kay was tapped for the job). “My unpopular philosophy,’’ says Lusitana, “was that when you signed with a paper you signed to do any story.’’ Finley, of course, sees it differently. “I feel specialization is an asset, and I felt he was hurting my marketability.” Eventually Finley applied to work in the sports department of the Union , and after discussions between Union sports editor Jack Murphy, editor Gerald Warren, and Tribune associate editor Neil Morgan, Finley crossed the hall and joined the Union sports staff. Prior to that time there had been a policy of not allowing the staffs to move back and forth between the two papers, but after Finley did it, the floodgate opened. About a dozen Tribune writers applied to go to work for the Union . None were allowed to.

Lusitana’s influence was at full strength in 1977 when the Tribune, in another attempt to bolster circulation, undertook what was billed as a quarter-million-dollar promotional campaign. Organized chiefly by Lusitana, the campaign was replete with billboards, sloganeering (“Pick up the Tribune, when you really want to know’’), jingles, and television commercials. (One reporter recalls with amusement that he was pulled from his regular assignment while the television commercials were being made. “I had to come in to cover stories that other people were supposed to cover, but they were making commercials, ” he says, stifling a chuckle. The ads were of the “slice-of-life” genre, showing reporters furiously typing or grabbing coats and “hitting the streets” to get the story.) But almost all the changes instituted by the paper in conjunction with the promotion were cosmetic, and the campaign fell flat. It had been paid for mostly in trades of advertising space for air time on local radio and television stations, but about $60,000 in cash was also spent.

“It was a waste of money,” Fred Kinne now admits. “We were a little too gimmicky on that campaign. We weren’t really sold on it ourselves when we were doing it.” All the noise and bright lights bought a few very expensive subscriptions. Circulation rose by about 2000 that year.

Since the ad campaign, the Tribune has gone through drastic changes in the organization of the newspaper, as well as in the organization of the staff and executives. Things have settled down a bit, and now there is a strong emphasis on getting today's news into today’s newspaper, which is the single greatest advantage an afternoon paper has over one that publishes in the morning.

The Tribune, like all West Coast afternoon dailies, has a further advantage over almost all other papers in the country because much of the national news is based in the East, and there is a three-hour time difference between that part of the country and the West. Almost anything that happens back there during working hours has potential for making it into the Tribune the same day. On March second, for example, the Washington Star reported in its first edition that Billy Carter was in Bethesda Naval Hospital and was being treated for alcoholism. The reported malady was denied by hospital officials and the story was retracted in later editions of the paper. The story of the Star's erroneous report and subsequent retraction made it into the Tribune the same day it occurred.

To accommodate the recent efforts to put out a fresher newspaper, one that will command respect and attract readers, the Tribune’s system has changed so that the entire paper is being made up from scratch every day. In the past, some editorial parts of the paper were put together the night before. Now, the day starts at three a.m., when the assistant telegraph editor gets in and begins perusing what came in over the wires the night before. The Associated Press, United Press International, and the Chicago Sun Times News Service send stories to the Tribune at the rate of about one every minute, all day and all night. (Up until about two years ago, the Tribune subscribed to the New York Times News Service, as the Union does now, but Tribune executives decided that the lighter, easier reading provided by the Sun Times Service better suited their purposes.)

The pace of the work day accelerates when Mike Walker, the city editor, shows up at the office about 6:30 a.m. By then he’s read the morning Union and Times and the green sheet from yesterday afternoon. He also listens to news radio in the shower and on his way to work, “So I have a fair idea of what our competition has done, and what we’ve already done. ’’ For a couple of hours before Walker gets in, two assistant city editors have been working. They hand Walker lists of available photos, lists of stories that were completed the night before, the wire-service stories he might be interested in, a log of stories covered by one of the three local television stations the night before, and a log of political stories in progress. By the time of the first editors' meeting at 7:30, Walker is pretty sure what stories will be appearing in the local section that day.

The meeting is held in managing editor Walt Miller’s office and is attended by Miller, his assistant Dick Eby, executive news editor Dick Sullivan, news editor Bedel Mack, and city editor Mike Walker. The purpose is to apprise Miller of what stories are shaping up to be played big on the front page and the local section page. Generally Miller leaves those decisions to his editors, and only rarely does he intervene. Miller is soft-spoken, pipesmoking, almost taciturn. He quietly points out things he thinks should have been done differently. “We had a good hard-news story come in yesterday on Balboa Park,” he deadpans as the editors stroll in for the morning meeting. “But we had that SDSU thing on B-1, which everybody knew about.” Enough said.

He goes down the lists he's been handed and asks questions about certain stories and how they’ll be played, but it all seems pretty routine to him. “I see we got another cop shooting,” he mumbles as if he were talking about a store opening. “It’s better than that sleeper hold,” jests Eby, referring to a previous story and an inside joke. All present laugh. Walker explains that a man pointed a shotgun at a cop and the officer shot him. “That'll do it,” remarks Bedel Mack. More laughter. “Some kind of suicide wish or something?” wonders Miller chewing on his pipe stem. The meeting lasts about fifteen minutes, with Walker doing most of the talking, explaining stories and their disposition. “Did the Union get the Chadd verdict?” Walker asks as the group breaks up. Nobody remembers seeing it. After the editors file out of the room, Dick Eby asks Miller, “What’s the play?” (meaning what is going to be the main front-page story). “Vietnam or something,” mutters Miller. “One of the things about a daily paper,” Miller remarks later, “is that nobody knows what we have until he has it in his hands. Nobody. There are so many hands in it.”

Later on, around nine o’clock, editor Fred Kinne drops by Miller’s office to find out what’s going on page one, and then at about 9:30 there’s an editorial meeting in Kinne’s office. This is where the decisions are made regarding the day’s editorials. The three editorial writers and the man who designs the editorial page discuss with Kinne what they feel are the pertinent issues the paper should address. “Some legislator wants to ease the pain of a speeding ticket,” says Larry Boodry, an editorial writer. “Between fifty-five and sixty-five miles an hour you pay it and it doesn’t go on your record. ’’ ‘ ‘That’s kinda ridiculous,” comments Kinne, pulling from his mouth the glistening stub of a cigar. “Put it down for Tuesday.”

Kinne says the political persuasion of the paper's editorials is “right down the middle.” When Jim Copley was alive he envisioned the Tribune as the politically independent paper and the Union ’s editorial page as the carrier of the company line, which was strictly Republican. But for the eighteen years prior to 1970, when he stepped down. Tribune editor Gene Williams was farther to the right then the Union , and his newspaper reflected that. It fell to Gene Gregston, who succeeded Williams, to change the Tribune’s course. Just after Gregston took over he was called into Copley’s office, where he was told to make the Tribune as different as possible from the Union . Gregston was editor for only about a year, but he’s credited with making many significant changes, including starting the six-column format, instituting the “Action Line” column, hiring many more people, and getting substantial merit raises for Tribune staffers. But it was Gregston’s endorsements of Democrats on the editorial page that are remembered most fondly by some longtime employees. Jerry Brown was endorsed for secretary of state in 1970 by the Tribune.

When Fred Kinne took the reins in 1971, the editorial page began to shift back toward a stance more in line with the Union 's. The Tribune endorsed Evelle Younger for governor last year. Former assistant managing editor Larry Lusitana says that in 1974 his invitations to the editorial conferences ceased after he kept insisting that the paper run an editorial calling for Nixon’s impeachment.

By about the time the editorial meeting breaks up, news editor Bedel Mack usually knows what the front page of the first edition is going to look like. The Tribune prides itself on using a lot of photographs, and since the promotional campaign of 1977, big color pictures have appeared on the front page almost daily. Some kind of artwork is supposed to appear on nearly every page of the paper. In fact, the use of photos is considered so important that Walt Miller can pick up from his desk a blurry picture of a dead Vietnamese soldier with troops running by him and say, “If we gotta chop half a story to get this in, we’ll do it. ’’ The photograph appeared on page one that day.

The major reason for the use of large, colorful photographs is, of course, to attract readers; and in the summertime it is common to see front-page pictures of bikini-clad women lounging at the beach. Such journalistic decisions may not have much to do with the day’s news, but as editor Fred Kinne knows, they sell papers, and ultimately, that is what his job is about. In pursuit of that goal, sixty-three-year-old Kinne, who is expected to retire soon, has not won unqualified praise from his staff members. To some he is known as “Silly Putty.” “Freddie just wants to be loved, ” chuckles one reporter. “His philosophy is wait, wait, wait, and maybe the problems will go away. ” But Kinne heads up a newspaper with many problems that are beyond its control and which will probably never go away. Of the many attempts to invigorate his paper and have it grow with the community it serves, he says, “The only way you get comment on things that are good is when people call and ask for another copy. Rarely do you get letters saying, ‘Gee, that’s good. Keep it up.’ You get a lot of letters saying, ‘That’s crappy. Knock it out.’ Strangely enough, the one feature I got more than fifty calls on was ‘Tune in Tomorrow,’ the soap opera thing that runs on Saturday. I thought it was a good feature, but I didn’t think we'd get that kind of reaction. Sometimes you wonder if you know what you’re doing.”