CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

THE IMPACT OF THE FUTURE ON THE NEWSPAPER ·'

A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in

Mass Communication

by

Herbert Paul Ford ,/

January, 1975 The thes#of Herb..eft} Paul Ford is approved:

California State University, Northridge

December, 1974

ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Several persons are due special thanks for the part they have played in the inspiration and execution of this thesis.

Dr. DeWayne Johnson, professor of journalism at California State

University, Northridge, stimulated my thinking over a period of months as the original idea for the thesis was developing. Throughout prepa­ ration of the manuscript he gave consistently helpful guidance and en­ couragement.

Initial steps in the thesis preparation were taken under the di­ rection of Dr. Joseph N. Webb of the California State University,

Northridge, journalism faculty. His presentation of diverse, new re­ search methods and his concern for the subject is much appreciated.

Gratitude is also due the World Future Society, Media General,

Inc., and the faculty and staff of Pacific Union College for materials and other help given as work on the thesis went forward.

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii

Chapter

I. FUTURE'S WORLD ...... 1

II. THE FUTURE AND ITS STUDY. . . . 12

III. IMPACTUS ... 33

IV. FUTURE FREE?. 60

V. THROUGH THE STAR GATE • • • 76

BIBLIOGRAPHY .• . . 94

(

iv ABSTRACT

THE IMPACT OF THE FUTURE ON THE NEWSPAPER

by

Herbert Paul Ford

Master of Arts in Mass Communications

December, 1974

In terms of itself print journalism has devoted most of its atten­

tion to the past and the present. During less complex times this back­ ward-sideward look proved adequate if not rewarding. The complexity of modern society, however, with its onrush of technology and threats to

traditional American freedom of the press, calls for a look in a third

direction--the future.

It is in the development of alternative scenarios of the future,

through the formation and consistent functioning of futures study groups, that news ~per problems of the future may be more easily met.

By the study of numerous possible futures, and in the setting of strat­

egies to accommodate each, newspapers may more effectively meet to­ morrow's challenges.

Because it deals with the probable rather than the actual, study

of the future is sometimes considered little more than science fiction.

However, futures study, with its attendant, growing body of literature

and developing methodology, has already made significant contributions

v to an awareness of the future in business and industry. Its contri­ butions, if sought, may provide significant help to the newspaper busi- ness.

The actual written or visual depiction of futures scenarios has a contributory effect both in stimulation of the depictor to help "make it happen," and in commending futures study to others. The testing of print journalism scenarios of the future among editors, publishers and reporters is likely to stimulate action eventuating in the development of more newspaper futures study groups.

vi CHAPTER I

FUTURE'S WORLD

The weather in Sansan had turned unusually cold during the past

24 hours. This morning's TILA (today's integrated living analysis) was assuring its viewers that the arrival of two new ice reservoirs

from Antarctica, now anchored just off the suburb of San Francisco,

was not the cause. A low-pressure system moving onshore, which had

been-continuously monitored since its birth two weeks ago in the Gulf

of Alaska by the World Weather Authority, was the cause of the nippy

weather.

TILA explained that the two bergs were completely covered with a

tough plastic designed to prevent melting and evaporation. The effect

of the icebergs on the atmosphere was negligible. The living analysis

noted that the two white masses would be producing roughly half the

fresh water needed to supply Sansan for half a year. Quarrying of the

bergs would begin just as soon as break-up and conveyor systems could

be installed, the report concluded. 1

Jim Milstad found the coolness of the weather refreshing as he

stepped out onto the viewdeck of his habitat in the Clearspring living

center. The unvarying 68-degree temperature inside, regulated by

Clearspring's Control Central, left Jim with a growing desire for

change. Although he knew it was out of the question, he sometimes

1 2

wanted to tell the Control Central people to take ~is habitat off the system for just one day so he could make things as hot or as cold as he liked. "I'd like to see how it feels to get the place really hot or cold for once," he thought.

Far off to the northwest Jim could see the pearly tops of the two bergs with the line of deep blue reaching to the horizon beyond. It was cool, he thought, as he reached down to flip on the extension of his habitat information console. "I'll get another fix on those bergs," he mused. "They must be pretty big if they show up so clear here from more than 10 miles away!"

Jim pushed the "Newsci" button on the publications panel of the console, knowing that the arrival of the bergs would be one of the bigger stories in the scientific news daily. Out of the console's

COPY slot smoothly rolled the early morning edition of SCISCOPE, its vinyl-like composition still warm to the touch. "Dad told me there was an old saying back in the 20th century which went 'Get it while

it 's hot, "' Jim laughed to himself. "They mtis t have had us in mind when they thought that one up."

The two icebergs, Jim read on page three, had started their jour­ ney from Antarctica 10 months ago. Less than one-tenth of their ice capacity had been lost in the journey because they had been surrounded by two sheets of plastic-type insulation. The sheets were actually a sort of quilt with water in between, almost completely sealing off the bergs from outside temperature changes as they moved slowly northward.

Specially designed helio and tug craft, mere specks in comparison to

the giant white mountains, had brought them up from the south.

A holographic view of the ice masses dominated the lower half of 3

SCISCOPE's third page. Interested, Jim dropped the page onto the con­

sole's Holoview table. The huge size and brilliant azure whiteness of

the ice mountains, contrasting with the deep purple-blueness of their watery bed, was almost too striking for words.

A story on SCISCOPE's first page caught Jim's eye as he took the

publication off the console. It concerned an enlarged experimental

ecological system on the lunar surface. The new luna farm, noted the

article, was the second commercially viable one established in the

southern Lunasphere. The new proteid production system was expected

to begin making a dent in Earth's continual food shortage within a few months. A new fleet of micro-quartz-skinned space truc~s was being

readied to bring an estimated 100 tons of foodstuffs daily from the moon fields to newly completed facilities just outside the center of

Bosnywash on the Atlantic coast.2

Despite refinements in breeding controls, motorized farm equip­ ment, and improved crop selectivity, the SCISCOPE article pointed out,

the long-time food crisis on Earth was far from over. The experimen­

tal systems on the lunar surface were seen as the forerunners of

Earth's best hope for relief. Computer-controlled communications be­

tween food producers on earth and the moon were already providing in­

stant, tailor-made answers for the toughest of the lunar food produc­

ers' problems, but the best answers alone were not good enough to

keep up with the demands of more than 10 billion earthlings, it seemed.

The lack of food, Jim knew, was Earth's most vexing problem. It

dominated all the news reports. Everyone talked about it, realizing

that without a workable answer soon, another "solution" in the form

of international warfare like that of 1996 and 2012 might soon explode 4

again. Despite giant strides in production of the high-nutrient fish, single-cell, and petro proteins, food shortages only seemed to in­ crease. Laboratory products such as MOD (a milk-orange drink combin­ ing the protein of milk and the vitamins of orange juice) and the highly enriched soybean beverage powder substitute for milk, long hoped to be the answer, had helped millions. But hunger remained the single most volatile issue on Earth.3

"They'd better get a hundred of those luna farms operating if they are going to stop another war like that last one," sighed Jim as he fed the copy of SCISCOPE back into the console for recycling. He touched a button on a small panel beside the information console as he started back into his bachelor habitat. In exactly four minutes a transmover would be waiting outside his front door in response to the command of the button.

Inside the compact, soft-toned habitat, Jim suddenly felt uneasy.

He glanced at the SMT (small intelligence terminal) on his desk, then at the master information console on the nearby wall with its panels of communication buttons and switches. He walked over and laid his hand on the MHC (master habitat control) unit which automatically han­ dled every operation in the habitat.

"What would happen if all this stuff just went 'Pow!' someday?"

Jim asked himself. "It'd take an army to get it going again. But

.,"he paused, "maybe if that happened I'd get a chance to do some­ thing for myself. Now everything--everything--is already done.

"I want a piece of information and 'Wham!' the SMT grabs it for me--just the touch of a few keys. There's no effort on my part, and for some reason that bothers me. When I need food, MHC serves it up 5

at exactly the right temperature. That's fine .•. but I'd like to do it myself sometime just for a change."

The questions came tumbling out, thoughts that had been building up inside for a long time. Then, in the middle of it all, a buzzer cut his thoughts short. The transmover was waiting outside.

Jim slid easily into the sleek little transmover waiting for him at the door. He grinned at the luminous yellow-greenishness of the vehicle. "Great," he exclaimed. "That's a better color than that brown-pink job they threw at me yesterday!"

Settling into the wide seat, Jim pushed the "Surge" button, at the same time pressing the accelerator with his foot. Moments later, as he approached the superway, he flipped on an overhead switch marked

"Comcon. 11 A pleasing but authoritative voice spoke:

"Your entry will begin in one minute. Please engage your 'Auto­ con' button giving control of your vehicle to this command. Transpac conditions this morning are heavy, so you can allow six minutes to the terminal."

The transmover, now operated by the superway's central control, gentled onto a slotted ramp leading onto the broad traffic artery. A slight "Click" announced that a control arm had locked into place under the vehicle.

In a few moments the transmover, guided by the control arm, gain­ ed speed to 144 km. per hour as it moved from the lengthy ramp onto the superway itself. A series of carefully executed integrations brought Jim to one of the innermost lanes and a speed of 240 km. per hour.

Jim reached for a switch overhead to fill the little vehicle with 6 his favorite music, but, noticing the lights on the mover's master

panel twinkling from predominantly greens to yellows, he decided to

skip it. "We're almost at the terminal, anyway," he decided.

The controlling mechanism under the transmover, guided by comput­

ers at the superway's central control, now began moving the little ve- hicle through the lanes of traffic to the outside. A fluid-like slow­

ing began. The panel speed indicators began to spin downward: 200 km.,

150 km., 100 km., 80 km ..•. Then Jim was inside the terminal it- self.

When the transmover had stopped, Jim stepped out onto a pedway which took him quickly to a small room on an upper level of the termi­ nal. There he touched a button reading "Transroute South" on a light- ed diagram. A moment later he joined several others who stepped into a tubular "Transroute South" mover that had made a silent arrival. He selected a private compartment and settled back into the big, comfort- able chair in it, stretching out luxuriously as he felt the familiar

forward surge of the mover.

"Our trip to the Transroute South terminus this morning will take

20 minutes," explained the omnipresent Voice of Transroute as they broke out into the brilliant morning sunlight from the massive under- ground terminal complex. "Temperature at the terminus is 74 degrees, with scattered high clouds."

A glance at the cluster of dials on his right told Jim the mover was just passing the 480-km.-mile-per-hour mark on the way to its cruising speed of 800. Off to the right, through the compartment's large window, he caught a glimpse of the Pacific, and knew they would 4 be flashing past the district of San Jose in a few moments. 7

Still troubled by his earlier thoughts about the food crisis, Jim

turned from the window to the information console near his left hand.

"I'll see what AGECO has to say," he thought. Selecting the publica­

tion from 30 offerings on the console, he found that the editors seem­

ed as concerned as he was. There was a front-page story citing the world-wide extent of the crisis, and a special feature on mariculture.

Sea farming, the feature stated, would be a $300 billion enter­ prise in 2025, and the raising of fish and shellfish under controlled

conditions was expected to ease the universal clamor for more food.

"I won't be counting on it," frowned Jim. "The more marifarms

they start, the worse the food situation seems to get. I don't think

they'll ever catch up."

The article noted that annual mariharvests had been raised from

90 million metons in the last years of the 20th century to some 100 million metons in 2010, well over the "safe" harvest limit if ocean

life was to sufficiently reproduce itself. But, the author contended, an eventual harvest of more than 200 million metons would be safe within five years due to improving habitat and imaginative fishing

techniques. Artificial reefs and selective breeding of high-perform­ ance fishes was expected to expand the mariharvests greatly.5

By the time he finished reading the AGECO article, Jim realized he had not yet gotten a world update for the day. A touch of the

"Worldview" button on the information console brought a documentary­

type presentation flickering to life on the wall in front of him.

Presented holographically,-.the five-minute presentation left Jim emo­

tionally drained, so vivid had the full-dimension report been.

Punching off the Worldview scenes, he felt a throb touch his wrist 8 under his autoceiver. "Yes," he said, raising the instrument.

'.'Jim, this is Harold Brunell in London," a crisp voice said from the tiny device. "We're going to need you over here tomorrow morning if we're to get this energy deal finalized. The Africans are still holding back. They've seen a whole blizzard of paper and they're close to being convinced they should join in the combine--but they're not close enough. They seem to want something our reports and dinners and quadraphonic presentations can't give them; they want 'humanness.'

You've got that, Jim, and we need you badly."

"Well, I probably could make it, Harold," Jim agreed, "if you really think my being there is necessary to the closing of the deal.

It'll take some shuffling on this end, but I can make the overnight sonic this evening and be there by eight in the morning. What time do you meet with them again?"

"We're meeting at eleven our time here, so that will be just great," Harold replied. "It'll take a half-hour from the terminal to the office. We'll have plenty of time to give you a full update be­ fore the meeting. I'll be looking for you, Jim."

"OK, I'll be there. But send over your latest strategy brief so

I can digest it before I go to sleep on the sonic tonight. I'll see you in the morning, Harold."

"Well, that means changing everything for the next couple of days," Jim realized as he felt a slight slowing tug of the mover.

"I'll just wait until I get to the office to program the changes; we should be almost to the terminus by now."

"We are now arriving at the Transroute South terminus," the voice above Jim's head announced almost as in response to his thought. The 9 mover's powerful reverse thrusters began gentling it to a flowing stop. 6

On the view wall in front of him Jim saw that data about the trip was beginning to print out. He noted with satisfaction that a half minute had been shaved from the trip's anticipated 20 minutes.

The trip data--energy used, passengers carried, weather condi­ tions en route--was followed by a three-minute capsule of business news Jim had ordered from the information console. Some of the scenes midway through the report startled him. They pictured Harold Brunell in London announcing that Jim Milstad of Geoglobal Systems would be arriving shortly for the closing of the world's largest geothermal energy deal, a combined effort of four African, three European, and five Western countries.

"Well," Jim thought as the business news capsule concluded," old

Harold doesn't waste any time. It hasn't been more than five minutes since we were talking together. Either he was so sure I would come he released the news before speaking with me, or he had the news people right outside his office there in London. Either way, that's getting the news around the world pretty fast!"

The compartment door slid open and Jim stepped out into the Trans­ route South terminus--right into the middle of a huge crowd of milling people. No one was moving anywhere, they were just packed together in a big knot.

"What's the matter~ why aren't we moving?" he asked a uniformed terminus employee who was trying to push his way past.

"The pedways have all stopped. There's been a fusion shutdown

. it, it's never happened before," the fellow said unbelievingly. 10

"But aren't there any walkways out of the terminus?" queried Jim.

"Walkways . • . you mean to walk on?" the terminus worker looked puzzled. "Well well, yes, come to think of it there are a couple of them. Over there, over past those two big columns--you see them? But you're not going to walk out of the terminus, are you?"

"Yep. Yes, that's exactly what I'm going to do," grinned Jim as he began pushing his way through the crowd toward the distant pillars.

"That's something I've been wanting to do for a long time now, to re­ place one of those all-efficient computerized gadgets of ours with a more efficient gadget--me!" 11

FOOTNOTES

lEdward R. LiPuma, "Icebergs: Reservoirs for the F1,1ture," Future~. 1973, pp. 30-32.

2Time, 17 June 1974, p. 79.

3Paul W. Harris, "Feeding Billions," J-M Future II, 1974, pp. 24-27.

4Edward R. LiPuma, "To Move About This Crowded Planet," Future.!_, 1973, pp. 18-23.

5non Dedera, "The Deepest Frontier," J-M Future..!!_, 1974, PP· 2-7.

6LiPuma, E.E.· cit., p. 23. CHAPTER II

THE FUTURE AND ITS STUDY

The future.

It is an object of fear to some, a fount of inspiration for others. To newspaper people, whose concerns have revolved largely a­ round the present and the past, the future sometimes makes good copy but seldom finds its way into discussions at their conventions or re­ searches by their staffs.

Of late, those who study futurology have been getting some rough words from the press. Writing in The Bulletin of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Chicago writer Dennis J. Chase seems to speak for a number in print journalism when he explains, "Predictors have al­ ways been around, but never have they been in such widespread supply among all the special interest groups, each of which wants a forecast that will serve The Cause.

"Journalists have always been easy marks for statisticians.

There are statistics for everything: the size of Moratorium-day crowds, the number of unemployed, the increase in drug addiction and the num­ ber of high school marijuana smokers .

"Forecasters have tunnel vision: their projections are always in a vacuum, and ignore cyclical and seasonal movements. They underesti­ 1 mate changes. They completely ignore random movements."

Chase concludes his call for curbing the forecasters by giving fellow journalists three rules they should apply: "First, impose time

12 13

limits on all projections Second, demand evidence . . . Third, reject all hedgers."

"Actually, I am not antiforecasting," Chase avows. "Predictions have a limited use, but not the one usually intended. They can tell us more about where we are than where we will go; they illuminate the past and present more than instruct about the future.

"It is the nature of man that trips up the predictors. Few things about humans are certain. We live; we die. We select; we discard.

We act; we don't act. It is time to admit that some things about hu­ mans are, at base, unpredictable. Most forecasts about human activity of any duration are based on guesswork. More sophisticated, perhaps, than the astrologers, palm readers and crystal-ball gazers, but still guesswork. After all, we are not Gods."

Anti~futurists, like Chase, almost always pick from the arena of forecasting the notable failure, concluding from it that all prediction is valueless. In part such reasoning may stem from the fact that jour­ nalists do "get t,aken" from time to time by the insincere or unstudied predictor. It is much simpler, goes the reasoning, to reject the pre­ dictions of all futurists rather than be embarrassed by the few whose forecasts do not prove out.

While futurology should and always will have its critics, it has moved far beyond the charlatan status Chase would assign to it. Cer­ tainly it is still an art rather than a science, but that does not mean it is based on simple guesswork.

In the face of criticism such as Chase makes regarding the use by the press of information about the future, it may seem an insult to suggest that print journalism itself take a look toward its own future. 14

Yet there is good reason for such a suggestion.

The business of print journalism has become complex. The simple

if hard-working and competitive days of early 20th century newspaper­

ing have given way to overriding concerns about supplies and labor re­ lations. Compromises aimed at holding the line against soaring costs have to be made continually. Newspapers must contend with public de­ mands for access to their columns and governmental denials of access

to public information.

Few publishers or editors, caught up in the maze of today's print journalism problems, feel they have time to do little more than stagger from one crisis to the next. Yet most would agree that the problems with which they wrestle show no signs of going away. Indeed, the problems seem to be increasing.

Such a prospect leads to the question: "Would a study of the fu­ ture of our craft provide ways by which we might meet tomorrow's prob­ lems in a better way?" If full utilization of the emerging techniques of futurology are applied in a concerted way, the answer should be a decided "Yes."

Dennis Livingston has described present-day futurology as "an in­ terdisciplinary field which trades in systematic speculation about al­ ternative futures. The root assumption is that while it may not be possible to predict the future, it is not only feasible but necessary to anticipate the ·Options open to us. It is quite possible to set forth explicitly the finite number of choices that can be made about some particular topic and predict the consequences of each choice for better or worse."3

Livingston explains why the future should be studied: "In the 15

complex, rapidly changing world we live in today we obviously can't

afford to wait until the harmful consequences of bad choices approach

the disaster state before we do something. Thus we have seen the rise

of futurology, those who practice it, and the signs of creeping pro­

fessionalism, a variety of methodologies, institutionalization of fu­

turists in business and government, specialized forecasting concerns,

'think tanks,' and the birth of futuristic jargon, journals and asso­

ciations."4

Livingston's reasons for studying the future are being echoed by

a growing number of thinking leaders in government and business who

are tired of coming up against problems for which time, energy and

cost-saving answers might have been found earlier had the expertise of

futurists been applied to them.

In introducing a compilation of papers by leaders on the role of

the future in education, author Alvin Toffler lists five important

reasons for studying the future. while the reasoning is geared to ed­

ucation, its application is broader, certainly worthy of thought by

those in other disciplines:

First, the writers of the papers agree that "today's schools and

universities are too past- and present-bound." This charge might be made in many areas, including print journalism.

Second, the authors also agreed that "technological and social

change is outracing the educational system, and that social reality is

transforming itself m9re rapidly than our educational images of that

reality." A strategy to close the gap is needed, says Toffler. "This

strategy is based on a recognition that the future, itself, can be a powerful organizing concept for change . . . introducing the future is 16

a direct, yet relatively painless, way to begin the move toward neces-

sary changes. II

Third, a study of the future is valuable, according to the writ­

ers, because "the concept of the future is closely bound up with the

motivation of the learner, and our failure to recognize this paralyzes

our programs and mutilates our children.

"Future-conscious education is a key to adaptivity ... it is

especially significant for women and for the children of ethnic minor­

ities, both of which can today be regarded as 'future-deprived."'

Fourth, the writers of the papers feel future study of education

is important because "the future is not merely a 'subject' but a per­

spective as well, and, in urging its introduction into learning" they

are also arguing for a new organization of knowledge.

Fifth, Toffler writes, "the authors assume ... that a focus on

the future is relevant to all learners, regardless of their age ..

. The future represents a starting point for change at all levels."5

John McHale, one of the leading futurists, points to yet another

reason for studying the future. "Within our narrower context of con­

cern," he says, "the predictors of major changes are often their own

self-fulfilling prophets, since they are also active in producing the

conceptual and physical discoveries that bring about such changes."6

In the work of such noted futurist-innovators as RCA's Robert W.

Sarnoff and space pioneer Wernher von Braun can be seen the truth of

McHale's contention.

Far from the cocksure band of prognosticators some make them out

to be, futurists readily admit the unpredictability of much of the fu­

ture. A number also admit to having underestimated the dynamics of 17 future change.

"Of course science and technology have consistently surpassed many of even the most utopian projections," McHale states. "Vast so­ cial changes have proceeded in ways that were not predictable within our traditional social theories."7

John R. Pierce further emphasizes the fact that all the future will never be forecast with total accuracy:

"What prophets of utopias and anti-utopias have lacked has been partly a foreknowledge of inherently unpredictable inventions. Among these are the vacuum tube and the transistor, which have both had a profound effect on our civilization • • . and a host of other discov­ eries and inventions.

"Any prophet, social or scientific, is bound to miss things of this sort and to the degree that the unpredictable and the unforesee­ able strongly affect the future, a prophet is bound to miss ••••

"Prophets of the past have underestimated both the adaptability of man and the phenomenally swift and strong impact of inventions and advances which, at their inception, seemed toys of civilization .

[showing] little promise of the revolutionary effects which they have had."8

And yet, despite obvious shortcomings, study of the future is growing in importance. Admittedly some of the directions of this growth concern serious futurists. Professor Daniel Bell, introducing the first materials to come out of the American Academy of Arts and

Sciences' Connnission on the Year 2000, reveals the futurists' dilennna:

"A good deal of today's interest in the future arises also from the bewitchment of technology and the way it has transformed the world. 18

Time wrote portentously: 'A growing number of professions have made prophecy a serious and highly organized enterprise. They were forced into it by the fact that technology has advanced far more rapidly in the past 50 years than in the previous 5,000. 1 And most of the images of the ftiture have concentrated on dazzling technological prospects.

"The possibility of prediction, the promise of technological wiz­ ardry, and the idea of a millennia! turning point make an irresistible combination to a jaded press that constantly needs to ingest new sen­ sations and novelties. The year 2000 has all the ingredients of becom­ ing, if it has not already become, a hoola-hoop craze."9

Spotlighting of the more sensational work of futurists is not all bad, Bell admits. To be sure it does tend to turn the work of even some serious futurists into a fad. And it can lead people to expect more ·than can be delivered. But it also gives publicity to what the serious futurist considers his real task, the complicated and often subtle art of defining alternatives so some of the coming changes may be directed consciously.

Isaac Asimov, author of more than 100 books on the future, as­ serts that the acceleration of change in the world must be dealt with if man is to survive.

"What once was a gentle breeze of change that could scarcely be felt," explains Asimov, 11 has become a tornado we must ride.

"To survive successfully in this breathless whirl, we must some­ how look ahead and avoid being caught by developments that proved dis­ astrous only because they were unexpected and unprovided for.

"We cannot live smugly in the present, because any plans we make now will inevitably mature in a future markedly different from the 19

present. We must take the future into account or our ideas and deeds will be worth nothing. We can no longer wait to cross bridges only when we come to them, for when we come to them there will be no time 10 left to plan smooth passages across them."

Print journalism has not escaped the "breathless whirl" of which

Asimov speaks. An exploding news technology, a public disenchantment with over-all press performance, and a steady increase in clashes be- tween newsmen and government over access to information are but the more dramatic high lights of the broader picture.

Such a state of rapid movement and serious challenge would seem to qualify print journalism as a business that should concern itself about its future. While few editors or publishers see disaster lurking just around the corner, others express growing concern that print jour- nalists as a whole are so caught up with present problems they cannot or will not take time to give serious study to the future of their craft.

The study of the future seems to be catching on most quickly in education. Information gathered by Professor H. Wentworth Eldredge of

Dartmouth College shows that there are now some 350 to 400 futures courses being taught in colleges and universities in the U.S.A. and 11 Canada. A small number of colleges retain "resident futurists" to teach such courses, but the majority of instructors are political sci- ence or humanities teachers who instruct a futures class in addition to their regular classroom assignments.

According to Prof. Eldredge and Billy Rojas, who pioneered the development of 10 undergraduate futures courses at Alice Lloyd College,

" ... a growing number of institutions are making major commitments to 20

futuristics work. In 1969 only one institution, the School of Educa- tion at the University of Massachusetts, had a full-fledged program permitting students to major in futures studies. Now there are at least eight, scattered from coast to coast, and several more in the . ,12 p 1 ann1ng stage. , • .

The objectives of the futures courses, say Eldredge and Rojas, have remained remarkably constant over the last five years. The most common goals of the courses are:

"1. Help students to anticipate change, i.e., make better career

choices, develop future-oriented attitu4es, contribute to

personal growth, etc.

"2. Survey forecasting methods.

"3. Develop ability to relate ideas and information between

disciplines.

"4. Facilitate student-student and student-teacher group inter-

action (curiously, few courses designed since 1971 have this

purpose.)

"5. Recognize the continuing impact of technology upon society.

"6. Develop ability to evaluate forecasts and utilize feedback

in doing so.

"7. Studymajor trends shaping the future.

"8. Explore ideas, images, models of the future.

"9. Examine case-study forecasts in specific problem areas. 13 "10. Develop alternative scenarios of the future."

Although the prospect for futures. courses in education seems as- sured, education has long been crippled because it has cut its view of life off at the present, Alvin Toffler believes. 21

"One would think," he says, "that education, concerned with the development of the individual and the enhancement of adaptability, would do all in its power to help children develop the appropriate time-bias, the suitable degree of futureness. Nothing could be more dangerously false.

"Consider, for example, the contrast between the way schools to­ day treat space and time. Every pupil, in virtually every school, is carefully helped to position himself in space. He is required to study geography. Maps, charts and globes all help pinpoint his spatial lo­ cation. Not only do we locate him with respect to his city, region, or country, we even try to explain the spatial relationship of the earth to the rest of the solar system and, indeed, to the universe.

"When it comes to locating the child in time, however," Toffler continues, "we play a cruel and disabling trick on him. He is steep­ ed, to the extent possible, in his nation's past and that of the world.

He studies ancient Greece and Rome, the rise of feudalism, the French

Revolution, and so forth. He is introduced to Bible stories and pa­ triotic legends. He is peppered with endless accounts of wars, revo­ lutions and upheavals, each one dutifully tagged with its appropriate date in the past.

"At some point he is even introduced to 'current events.' He may be asked to bring in newspaper clippings, and a really enterprising teacher may go so far as to ask him to watch the evening news on tele­ vision. He is offered, in short, a thin sliver of the present.

"And then time stops. The school is silent about tomorrow. 'Not only do our history courses terminate with the year they are taught,' wrote Professor Ossip Flechtheim a generation ago, 'but the same situa- 22

tion exists in the study of government and economics, psychology and

biology. 1 Time comes racing to an abrupt halt. The student is focused

backward instead of forward. The future, banned as it were from the

classroom, is banned from his consciousness as well. It is as though

there .were no future. "14

And yet, though such views as Toffler's deserve the most serious

consideration, this is not to say that the past has been devoid of

those who would have had it, and indeed, did make it otherwise. In the work of Marx and Freud we see notable examples of futurology. And any

list of those who held major concern for the future would be incomplete

unless such names as Comte, Spencer, Durkheim, Weber and Pareto were

added. Far earlier than these, as John McHale notes, "Our Western view

of progress and improvement in the human condition [derived] from two

associated sources--the Greek and the Judea-Christian traditions-­

which of course emerge from, and were influenced by, earlier tradi­

tions."l5

As printing spread from land to land, the views of those concern­

ed with the future were given wider attention. By the middle of the

20th century the writings of those concerned to a major extent with the

future had grown to hundreds of volumes making a complete listing too

exhaustive and any selection open to criticism.

However, a contemporary listing beginning with the 1950s would

surely be incomplete unless it included Lyman Bryson's editing of

"Facing the Future's Risks" (1935) with its views on physics, chemis­

try, biology, economics, politics, crime and population.

William F. Ogburn's "Social Change," published in 1950, was a

classic work on the causes and progress of change in society. A study 23

of possible future shortages in food and raw materials is found in

Harrison Brown's book, "The Challenge of Man's Future," published in

1954.

The 1960s saw a large increase in the number of titles about the future. Among those writing on social trends were Fritz Baade, Burnham

P. Beckwith, Daniel Bell, Kenneth Boulding, Edward H. Carr, Peter F.

Drucker, R. Buckminster Fuller, Dennis Gabor, Robert Heilbroner, John

McHale, Donald Michael and John R. Platt. Arthur C. Clarke, T. J.

Gordon, Gerald Leach and George Thomson published their views on tech- nological progress.

The Christian French sociologist, Jacques Ellul, in "The Techno­ logical Society" (1965), lamented the growing reliance upon utilitarian techniques rather than prayer, moral decisions and mystical intuition to solve personal and social problems. Both Ellul and the Jesuit biol- agist, P. Teilhard de Chardin, foresaw the collectivization of mankind,

Ellul because of man's reliance upon utilitarian techniques, Teilhard de Chardin because of "a community of men without individual minds but 16 rather 'an envelope of thinking s~bstance. '"

An explosion of futures titles came in the early 1970s. A list of the more noted autho.rs would include Wendell Bell, "The Sociology of the Future"; Jesser Bernard, "The Future of Marriage"; Jim Burns,

"Anthropods--New Design Futures"; Niger Calder, "Technopolis"; Paul

Dickson, "Think Tanks"; Jay W. Forrester, "World Dynamics"; Wolfgang

Friedman, "The Future of the Oceans"; Walter G. Hack, "Educational Fu- turism 1985"; Herman.Kahn and B. Bruce-Biggs, "Things to Come: Think- ing About the 70's and 80's"; Dennis Meadows, "The Limits to Growth";

Fred Polak, "The Image of the Future"; B. F. Skinner, "Beyond Freedom 24

and Dignity"; John G. Taylor, "The Shape of Minds to Come"; Albert H.

Teich (ed.), "Technology and Men's Futures"; Alvin Toffler, "Future

Shock"; and W. Timothy Weaver, "The Delphi Method."

Robert E. Weber, associate planner for the New Jersey department of education, has outlined some of the initial techniques of futurol­ ogy, describing their various contributions:

"1. Projection/Extrapolation. A relatively safe method, although one not without hazards, is to take a look at existing data and pat­ terns in that data (i.e., trends) and make projections.

"One looks especially for exponential curves (i.e., curves showing an increase in the rate of increase) for they may have powerful impacts and carry with them profound 'lead time' problems. Examples of expo­ nential curves are the speed of human travel, the number of books in the Harvard Library, automobile production, and skill obsolescence.

"2. The Dystopian Approach. Perhaps the best relatively current example of the dystopian view is George Orwell's '1984.' In 'Politics and the English Language' and '1984,' Orwell seized on a number of en­ vironmental clues and saw, very keenly, that if these were spun out for a number of years, the result would be such and such a society.

"3. The Utopian Approach. Among the more popular utopian tracts are Edward Bellamy's 'Looking Backwards' (1888) and William D. Howell's

'A Traveler from Alt:.;uria' (1894). The utopian view postulates 'ideal­ type' futures and generally reflects a dissatisfaction with human na­ ture and society and an impatience with human progress.

II . When the views of the utopianists are engaged with the methods of social planners--that is, programming to each a more equi­ table, just, and happy existence--the utopian tradition can become a 25 powerful tool . . . .

"4. Technological Assessment. As man has moved from civilized to post civilized conditions of existence, technology has played an in­ creasingly important role in shaping, if not to a certain extent, de­ termining the kind of society and world in which man lives."

Today's technology--weather satellites, fission energy, televi­ sion, computer technology, psycho-pharmaceuticals--all have some degree of impact on both man's present life and his future, Weber explains.

"Technological assessment, which is related to research analysis, is, next to demographic phenomena (which it influences), a prime key determinant. It should be remembered that the advent of agriculture and animal husbandry, the industrial revolution, and the attainment of post-industrial, post-civilized status were unplanned--they were the result of creative but reckless and random factors. And, the further we move into the future, the greater the need for a 'command/control' capacity so as to get 'things' out of the saddle and man into the sad­ dle (Emerson and Thoreau).

"5. Research Analysis. Taking a look at applied research (e.g., laser technology, cryogenics, thin films, two-way cable) will get us very quickly into the future but not very far into the future.

"Applied research is relatively costly but has the virtue of higher predictable payoff. Basic research, on the other hand, might cost a good deal less, but it carries with it the burdens of uncertain application and, often, unknown consequences.

"The marvelous-thing about basic research--the-formulation of hypotheses and the validation or invalidation of such hypotheses--is that it proceeds from the assumption that this is a 'knowable universe' 26

and, as such, is subject to human intervention and manipulation. That is, it affirms man's capacity to be, as Weston LaBarre put it, 'The best animal in the business' ('The Human Animal,' 1954).

"6. Legislative Implosion. We have long been aware of both the short-and-long-term effects of certain legislative measures (e.g., tariff laws, currency laws). In recent times, human growth and devel­ opment legislation, such as the G.I. Bill, have had both immediate and long-range effects.

"In the long run, legislative implosions will probably turn out to be a mixed bag. Thus, futurologists must be cautious. Some legis­ lative measures may be negative (e.g., agricultural subsidies, oil de­ pletion allowances), or positive (congressional and tax reforms), or they will have consequences which may be difficult to foresee (e.g., consequences for environmental pollution and control).

"7. Policy Formulation. Various policy formulations have long­ term (i.e., several decades) effects on both the domestic and world fronts. One thinks immediately of the Cold War policy, formulated in the late 1940s, which led to CIA excesses, Dulles-type brinksmanship, the U-2 and Bay of Pigs incidents, the Berlin mess, and the Vietnam debacle. " . Like technology, it has something to say about values, attitudes, budget, the economy, and so forth. As such, it is another parameter. or index with which the futurologist must either come to grips or set aside with extreme reservations.

".8. The Delphic Method. ('Asking the experts.') The Delphic method, developed by Olaf Helmer at the RAND Corporation and since used by others (e.g., the educational policy research group at 27

Syracuse University), employs the device of soliciting the advice of, generally, members of the 'invisible college'--that ad hoc group of persons who push the boundary limitations of new knowledge.

"Delphi groups are routinely asked to make statements about a series of future events and their probability of happening in a given time period. This is related to utopianism and other forms of navel­ gazing except that it proceeds from a firmer foundation of expertise.

Strong relatives of this technique are to be found among industrial forecasting-planning groups in such organizations as General Electric and IBM.

"In essence, the Delphi method assumes both bases of expertise and the ability to quantify the parameters of the problem at hand.

The unfortunate part of the Delphi and related methods (corporate long­ range planning) is that they are most often proprietary. General

Electric, for example, does not want people, and especially its com­ petitors, to know about its long-range research and development, pro­ duction, and marketing plans, and, even more particularly, which is being bread-boarded, or is on the drawing boards. If mistakes are to be minimal, it pays to get expert consultative advice. Thus, in fu­ turology, it does not pay to discount the expertise of the knowledge­ able.

"9. Expectancy Conditioning. Futurologists are getting to be numerous; futurologists even have their own journal and society. The more we create alternative futures, the more we influence the expec­ tancies of man.

"By generating an expectancy or range of expectancies, such as

'The Year 2000 1 by Kahn and Wiener, and the publications of such 28

futures groups as the Stanford Research Institute and Syracuse Uni­ versity, we set up a certain movement toward a future which creates itself.

"If enough people believe there is going to be a depression, there will be a depression. Ditto particular kinds of futures.

"10. The Altered-Mind-State Approach. There are a number of tools currently available to the futurologist--the scientific method, mathematical modeling, systems analysis, simulation, statistical manip­ ulation and even 'futures specific' tools, such as the Field Anomaly

Relaxation (FAR) method.

"However, all of these tools need to be accompanied by certain other human behaviors, such as the human insight and perceptions stem­ ming from expanded consciousness. A number of futurologists, already armed with bodies of expertise in widely divergent fields, have opted to influence the context of their thought by making inquiries from an expanded consciousness state. The availability of LSD-25, for re­ search use under government supervision/control, has now produced re­ searchers who can only be called 'navigators,' whose domain is the un­ known, the future, and, particularly, the conquest of inner space.

"11. Heuristic Programming. 'Heuristics' is a somewhat fancy name for a 'discipline' which is problem-solving-oriented and which relies on the mastery of the various rules and mechanics of creative behavior.

"In computer programming, a heuristic program is one that im­ plements any trial and error routine in problem-solving procedures and, in the case of exhaustive computer searches, dropping a human into the 29

system so as to get his insights (i.e., 'artful deductions') ••••

"There have now been delineated certain specified techniques in heuristics programming which get around pure 'navel-gazing' and cir­ cumvent the tremulous handling of unwieldy masses of information."17

Weber's list leaves much to be desired, particularly for those who insist on the method of science--that the ultimate conclusion of every man shall be the same. And yet he does not hold that his list is either scientific or complete. The list merely comprises a number of 18 "ways of getting from the present into the future."

Weber points with concern to the fact that, at least at present, most futurology efforts have outcomes that tend to be fairly global in nature. He proposes that a narrowing strategy prevail in study meth­ ods, either individually or in combination. He also notes that by narrowing the focus to a limited area, "We can have a project with manageable proportions and one with highly tangible relations to human growth and development. 1119

One of the greatest deficiencies of Weber's list is his admission that there are other methods he does not tell us about. How may we judge the merit of those we see against those we do not see? There are many' of innovative mind who may well believe that the value of those not shown may surpass that of those that are. There is ambiguity in several of the methods suggested; this tends to diminish their value. Still another area of concern is the comparison to "navel­ gazing" made for some of the methods. There is also perhaps over much of the ~priori, authority and tenacity approaches involved in the list.

But given these and other deficiencies which might be cited, can 30

we still find practical value in the use of all or part of Weber's list in a study of the future of print journalism? The answer depends on whether publishers, editors and others, such as journalism educators, are willing to accept the list for what it is, experimental "ways," rather than proven research methods, "of getting from the present into the future." As Albert and Donna Wilson have so aptly stated: "Unless we can discover and apply processes leading to dynamic stability, pre­ sent ecological, social, and psychological imbalances will continue to grow until they topple us. In brief, we must change our mode of change. i•20

If those concerned with the future can change their mode of change by being willing to test new research techniques as suggested by Weber, then his list should have real value.

As the "ways" of Weber and other futurists are passed along to the growing number of students of futures courses in colleges and univer­ sities and members of futures study groups in business and industry, unreliable elements will be isolated and discarded. As advancing com­ puterization is applied, even further refinement will take place.

In this emerging area of futures experimentation, print journal­ ism should take an active if not a leadership role. Too many present trends in print journalism which are now either unrealized or unex­ plored could blossom into full-blown, serious problems tomorrow. Too many potential threats to the very survival of print journalism exist for the business to neglect the help futures study could give. The key to a brighter tomorrow for print journalism is today's study of its future. 32

17Robert E. Weber, "The Techniques of Futurology," Journal of Creative Behavior Volume 7, Number 3 (Third Quarter, 1973), pp. 158-60.

18Ibid., p. 160.

19rbid.

20Robert E. Weber, "Human Potential and the Year 2000," Journal of Creative Behavior Volume 7, Number 2 (Second Quarter, 1973), p. 133. CHAPTER III

IMP ACTUS

\ What is the future of print journalism? Is it time for associa­

tions and groups within journalism, publishers, editors and writers to

turn a larger portion of their attention toward the future?

It would seem so, for a number of reasons.

First, newspaper technology is taking a great leap forward just now. Despite this fact, few publishers or editors have a clear con­

ception of where this step is leading. What the next step will be, or when it will be taken is of little if any concern to many.

If the current technological leap in print journalism follows the pattern in other businesses, then future waves of new technology can

be expected to appear in newsrooms with ever-increasing frequency. And

such waves of new technological devices will often appear with little or no warning.

Will print journalism be ready for the next wave of technological

growth that is thrust upon it? Or will newspaper people still be

struggling to surmount the difficulties of earlier advance? The de­ velopment of futures study groups by newspapers, concerned primarily with the impact of future technology, might forewarn publishers of com­

ing problems to such an extent they will be able to assure themselves

that the new machines will make a maximum contribution.

33 34

This first reason why print journalism should turn a larger por­

tion of its attention toward the future will be discussed in detail in

this chapter, while other reasons, listed below, will be discussed in more detail in Chapter IV.

Second, recent concerted efforts by government to place greater

stricture on the press constitutes an important reason print journal­

ism should be concerned for its future. Moves to curb the press during

the presidency of Richard M. Nixon were only symptomatic of continuing

efforts throughout government at all levels. Within a few short days

after he took office the press was to find itself misled by the admin­

istration of President Gerald Ford. Given the techniques of modern

press and public relations, duplicity at all levels of government is

likely not only to continue but to grow in frequency and scope.

George E. Reedy, once press secretary to President Lyndon B.

Johnson, speaks from experience when he asks that " ... even the nor­ mal legitimate techniques of public relations should be excluded from

the White House press operation. Nothing should be allowed to cast

doubt upon a press secretary's 'yea'--and his 'nay' should be one that

can be accepted without going over his statement with a fine-tooth

comb to determine what he is denying and what he is not denying.

II the benefits of razzle-dazzle are immediate and apparent.

It is not at all difficult for a press secretary to find reporters willing to give him and his boss a 'plug' in exchange for an exclusive.

Nor is it at all difficult to head off unpleasant stories with a bland

denial in the early stages of an administration before the question of

credibility has really arisen.

"But the plugs are transitory and the bland denials merely pave 35

the way for future trouble. And a press secretary who refuses to play

the game will find there are plenty of assistants in the White House willing to call his lack of 'creativeness' to the President's atten­

tion. He will also find that he has very few friends in the press, whose members always claim a preference for a 'no comment' over mis­

direction but who, in their guts, want something to write."l

Third, the voice of public criticism of the press is being heard

.with growing frequency. It is likely that such criticism will tend to

increase in the years ahead unless the press itself offers a mutually satisfactory solution. Studies relating to the future of society gen­

erally might uncover methods of minimizing this problem or at least

channeling it into productive rather than destructive directions.

Fourth, practically all futures writers, as they paint their ver­ bal pictures of tomorrow's mass communications media, do so with an almost exclusive electronic orientation. Print journalism is seldom mentioned. As writing about the future increases, this exclusionary tendency is likely to persist and to have an adverse effect on the newspaper business. Few of those who write about the future even sug­ gest kinds of mass communications other than that on the video tube.

If facsimile transmission of newspapers is mentioned by futurists, it is done so in the vaguest of terms. The concept most futurists suggest is that of the newspaper-on-the-screen type. Never is a held­ in-the-hand variety of newspaper of the future suggested, even though

this is as viable a concept as the on-the-screen one. Studies by newspaper futures units could counter this limited view by projecting futures which include home reception of a newspaper which may be held in the hand. Thus futurists could be familiarized with a valuable 36

alternative conception about future mass communications media.

Fifth among the reasons newspapers should be concerned about the future is that the early 1970s has seen an unprecedented merging of newspapers into chain operations. Where is this trend leading the newspaper business? What are its results likely to be in terms of the relationship of government and the press, the public and the press?

Can studies of the future, perhaps done in collaboration with elements of industry and business in which similar developments are taking place, provide alternatives for meeting threats that may develop as a result of a continuation of the merger trend?

Why should we be concerned that the future include print journal­ ism anyway? Is there any particular need to sustain the idea of a newspaper if future society decides it does not want it? Of course not.

But from a practical standpoint we would do well to remember the observation made by a number of futurists that the world of 2020 will be more like our present day than different from it. If this is so, then the newspaper will likely be a part of the future scene for some time. Efforts should be made to make as good or better a product than the newspaper of the 1970s.

There is another good reason to believe the newspaper will con­ tinue to be a part of our future way of life. It is the most complete record of the day's news. It is a more personal record than other forms. The newspaper can be held and handled, clipped and marked. In some McLuhanish way it might be considered an extension of the indi­ vidual's arm. The electronic media have never, and probably never will, do the thorough job of covering the day's news the newspaper 37

does. Thoughtful broadcast journalists are quick to acknowledge this fact.

"I would feel much happier if I could be confident that the people who watch our newscasts were also reading a couple of good daily news­ papers and a weekly newsmagazine, listening to a good radio news sta­ tion, and reading broadly from the non-fiction book shelves," says Bos

Johnson, news director of WSAZ-TV, Huntington, W. Va., 1973-74 nation­ al president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association.

"The broadcast journalist would be the last to pretend that we do the complete information job," Johnson admits. "The sheer limi­ tations of time prevent us from covering the most significant stories of the day in the depth which they deserve. Likewise the strictures of time force broadcasters across the country to leave as many or more stories on the newsroom desk as they take to the studio."2

The fickleness of society alone must not be allowed to determine whether the newspaper survives in the future. The lives and fortunes of too many hundreds of thousands of persons in print journalism are involved. And there is more than this. There is the key role of the newspaper as the best hope of society to serve as bellwether on the encroaching hand of government into individual freedoms. Television and radio, in presenting the news with the specter of license with­ drawal hanging constantly overhead, can hardly be faulted if their editiorial voices are sometimes muted. Thus the newspaper, along with the news magazine, stands relatively unfettered in serving as the ul­ timate check on unrestrained government--the voice of the people.

Some would suggest that U.S. print journalism would have no say in the matter should society--through fickleness or otherwise--decide 38

that newspapers had served their purpose and should die. And they would be right. But that does not mean newspapers should roll over and play dead should such a situation eventuate. The traditions of U.S. print journalism are, if not great, worthy ones. The newspaper's role as the voice of the people has reached peaks of glory, if at other times it has found itself languishing in the deepest shadows of the valley. Its resistance to control has been the consistent envy of much of the world.

All this is not to try to paint print journalism in the United

States true-blue and lily-white. The present-day product has departed far from the relative purity of earlier days. That this is a fact is one of the best reasons to suggest that today's publishers and editors should develop futures study groups. In such study, ways may be found to make the newspaper more a voice of the people and to return it to an even more unfettered state.

To a considerable extent the door that has led from the journal­ istic past to the present has closed for newspaper people. Only the door of the future is still open. The coming of the technological re­ volution in the newsroom has closed the past and locked it. Never a­ gain will the slow, laborious, if time-honored methods of getting the newspaper out be tolerated. The video data terminals, scanners and computers have sealed off the past with finality.

It is not easy, of course, to suggest to people, many of whom have long resisted change, that the future is the only way out, that taking hold of emerging, often sophisticated methods of news gather~ng, edit­ ing and printing is the best if not the only way to assure a future for the newspaper. That, however, is the way it is. Once the computer 39

virus infect~ the life system of the news business, there is no turning back; there is only "a hanging on for dear life" as one editor has put it.

But even as the new technology is being accepted in newsrooms all across America, there is danger of drawing the curtain to the future tightly closed just beyond the present wave of invention and innova­ tion. "In looking ahead to media changes, it is a mistake to concen­ trate too heavily on technological possibilities," says Herbert

Fredman, quite typically of this type of thinking.

Writing on "The Media Revolution" in Seminar in early 1974,

Fredman says, "Practically all the technology for revolutionary changes in communications is on hand, but other factors may carry more weight in what actually happens. ,.3 He cites economics, competition, govern­ ment action and public acceptance as the other factors.

Fredman displays a basic misunderstanding when he suggests the newspaper business can adopt a take-it-or-leave-it attitude toward fur­ ther technological development. Once one sets his foot upon the tech­ nological treadmill, it is a never-ending ride.

Technology, especially that relating to communications, has a way of sneaking up on people. Everyone desires change for the better, of course. But often the changes arrive before news leaders have had op­ portunity to make effective plans to integrate them into their oper­ ations.

Robert W. Sarnoff of RCA described the situation to the Common­ wealth Club of.San Francisco in the late 1960s.

"I welcome this opportunity to share with you various thought~ a­ bout the prospects and problems of what we are beginning to call the 40

knowledge industry," Sarnoff said. "This is an optimistic term now coming into vogue as a convenient means to describe the far-reaching potential effects of new informational resources and techniques.

"The emerging industry represents a coupling of two forces. One is a powerful communications and computer technology that enables us to transmit any type of intelligence over any distance, and to process, sort, and recall it in any desired form--all at electronic speed. The other is a rising inventory of data about every conceivable subject from astrophysics to child psychology."4

Sarnoff contends that together the communications technology and the rise in data available may bring about a tremendous expansion of the human intellect. This, he holds, could lead to profound cultural changes and a new effectiveness in managing our social, economic and political affairs.

"But will they?" asks Sarnoff. "I believe that the outcome is by no means certain. For in this field, as in so many others in the re­ cent past, the scope and swiftness of technological progress appears to haye taken us largely by surprise.

"There are primary ingredients of what Peter Drucker has called the 'Age of Discontinuity'--a time of such radical change that the past offers little guidance for coping with the problems of the present and the demands of the future. The new information technology is not sim­ ply an assortment of convenient new systems and services. It is a fundamental change in the scope and utility of our informational re­ sources--a quantum jump in the ability to collect, communicate and weigh in a total context every bit of information relevant to our plans and problems. To deal with the far-reaching impact of the information 41

revolution the times will call for new insight and determination."5

But Sarnoff notes there are signs that the need to use such deter­ mination and insight is not recognized by those who stand to be the largest gainers from the new technology.

Generally, those who could benefit most seem to be unprepared to absorb but a small portion of the data now available, or to apply the new communications and information techniques effectively, Sarnoff be­ lieves. Quantity, instead of quality, appears to be the goal, with the amassing of new facts given higher priority than the development of structures and relationships which will convert such facts to truly useful information.

"Until there is a more general awareness of these shortcomings-­ until plans and policies are better organized to harness the new tech­ nology," Sarnoff goes on, "we shall face the possibility of breakdown rather than a breakthrough in our management of public and private en­ terprises .•..

"The problem is basically one of developing a new point of view about the relationship between ourselves and the information flow. In the past we have stood apart from our means of communication, using them as needed in the same way we use the other tools and trappings of modern industrial society.

"The new information systems, however, require a human link in the chain--a symbiotic relationship between the individual and the machine and circuits that provide continuing acess to sources of information.

11 as Harvard's George Miller observes, man is a miserable component in a communications system. He has a narrow bandwidth, a 42

high noise level, is expensive to maintain, and sleeps eight hours out of every 24.

"But let us recognize that we cannot dispense with ourselves even if we wished to do so. The alternative, then, is to accept the phys- ical limitations and develop the relationship around them. . u6

Five years later, looking back on successive explosions in new in­ formation technology, Sarnoff said, "These developments have already revolutionized our approach to information--the ways in which we gener­ ate it, transmit it and receive it--the ways in which we store, re­ trieve, and use it. They have multiplied by thousands of times the capacity of communications channels, and the volume and the speed of information handling. The impact has been enormous ..

"It is now evident that these remarkable advances represent only a prelude, and that there is much more to come ....

"This new technology has evolved with surprising speed. Until about 1960, transistors were used as discrete elements, costing perhaps

$15 each. Today as many as 10,000 of these can be incorporated into a single integrated circuit costing from $10 to $20. At the current rate of progress, units containing a million elements should be on the mar­ ket in the same price range by 1980."7

Although Herbert Fredman may have misunderstood what is involved in anticipating and preparing for the coming of ever newer technology to the newsroom, it is safe to say he is little different from 90 per cent of those in the newspaper business. And little wonder: They are so busy trying to meet costs, work out installation schedules, and train personnel to use the new machines, they have almost no time left to be concerned, much less think, about what is coming next! 43

Journalism educators, whom one would think might have or could take more time than news executives to gaze into the crystal ball of the future, seem to do little better either in respect to the present new technology or concerning that which is just over the horizon. In a survey conducted for the "Conference on Education for Newspaper Jour­ nalists in the Seventies and Beyond," Erik L. Collins and Galen R.

Rarick of Ohio State University's School of Journalism found only 13 per cent of the respondents from 61 accredited schools of journalism said they offered courses devoted primarily to the new technology of journalism.

In studying the titles or descriptions of these courses, the re­ searchers found that only two of the courses were really concerned with the new technology. Some of the respondents did say, though, that they incorporated some information about the new technology into courses in news management or editing. In answering the question concerning a course on the new technology, one teacher wrote: "I don't know what you mean. rr8

It would be unfair to suggest that all newspaper people are uncon­ cerned about technology which may be developing just over the horizon, or that they have their eyes closed to the newspaper's future gener­ ally. In the late 1960s the New York Times Sunday editor, Lester

Markel, serving as chairman of a study group, carne up with a report recommending a long-range, coordinated plan to which senior executives of the paper would have to be "fully committed" if objectives were to be achieved. Two committees were formed--a group of executives to study proposals and a working committee to generate ideas. These two units comprised The Times' Committee on the Future. Topics considered 44

included characteristics of readers, new methods of getting informa­ tion into the home, and predictions of the city's development.9

In mid-1974, "Task Force 21," composed of personnel of Media

General, Inc., was developing an interim report concerning the future for that newspaper group. Richard Splittorf, of Media General, Inc., says of the group, "We want to develop all the alternatives to the fu­ ture possible, drawing ori studies done by others and the thinking of our own people."10

Still, it is safe to venture that these efforts represent the rare exception rather than the rule in newspaper concern about the future.

Again, there are important reasons why many publishers and editors draw the curtain across an extended view into the future. One of the big­ gest of these reasons is the upheaval implementation of some of the present new technology causes,

William Greider of the Washington Post's national news staff touches the problem in all its dramatic, human quality when he quotes

Eugene Mueller, a printer on the Post, as Mueller talks about the arri­ val of the new electronic machines at that newspaper:

"'Automation, we talk about this every day, ' says Mueller. 'We're talking about people--humanity. How much further can they go? The upper echelons of the Washington Post have lost complete touch with the working people in this building. We're human beings, we got problems, we got families. We're not a bunch of wild-eyed radicals.'

"'What we hope will happen,' says John Waits, a Post executive,

'is that as this [automation] progresses, as the numbers move down, there will develop a residual number to take care of the process. Just plain maintenance, for one thing. There will be a certain amount of 45

button-pushing, and it's not unskilled button-pushing.'

"This managerial vision of the future, rational and inevitable, collides with the human aspirations of men and women who work here right now," points out Greider, "people like Aloysius O'Mahony, a printer since he wa·s 14, a make-up expert, who assembles the loose lines of type into a page format.

"'I've devoted my whole life to printing, nothing else,' O'Mahony says gravely. 'I know nothing else. I love printing. It's an art.'

" • . . the printers see themselves as scapegoats for the failure of machines," Greider continues. "As they see it, the step-by-step changes to speed up the process have robbed printers of their skill, their control over the product, their pride in quality, without any off-setting gain in efficiency. The management, they say, was hood­ winked by 'the automation salesmen' and now, rather than admit that it was over-sold, it blames the printers.

II . the future is not going to be simply more of the speed up automation which printers have seen in the past," explains Greider,

"though some of them still speak of it in those terms.

"Ultimately, according to the new concept, a reporter in the fifth-floor newsroom or a classified ad taker on.the sixth floor will set at a typewriter and automatically originate electronic impulses which a computer will organize and translate into a piece of film, ready for the press. The computer will even organize the type into a whole page, replacing the human make-up artists. Someday, the experts think the reporter's typewriter will be connected_ via the computer di­ rectly to the press itself."ll

While the present crisis in the newspaper printing craft is real 46

enough, neither Greider nor many others seem willing to look beyond to­ day's confrontations at the real tomorrow upcoming. What happens, for example, when the reporter, rather than sending his story via computer directly to the presses, sends it instead into a computer maze which integrates and prints it into a journal which can roll out of an infor­ mation console in the subscriber's home on command? Where does that leave newspaper press production workers then?

A major step in dealing with printers as the new technology is introduced came on July 28, 1974, when members of the International

Typographical Union Local No. 6 approved an 11-year contract that cleared the road for automation of newspapers in New York City.

The contract ratification brought to a close a long era of resist­ ance to technology that saw the demise of many of the city's daily newspapers. It gave the publishers of the New York News and the New

York Times the freedom to introduce new equipment and determine the number of employees necessary to operate it. Union members, upder the contract, gained virtual lifetime job security with bonuses and other incentives if they choose to retire or go into another line of work.

"While the new agreement signals the dawn of a new era in New York newspaper publishing, it also closes an era of union strength in the backshop," says Editor and Publisher magazine of the contract. "Ac­ cording to an article tracing the history of the printers' accord by

A. H. Raskin in the New York Times, July 29 issue, ' if the cur- rent contract marks a full turn toward rationality in bargaining, it als.o signals a slow slide into oblivion by the printers' union, now virtually doomed by its acceptance of the reality that automation is 12 indispensable to newspaper survival. '" 47

The "people problem," as Managing Editor Joseph W. Shoquist of the Milwaukee Journal points out, is the key one when it comes to im­ plementation of the tools that bring the future into the newspaper business.

"One doesn't have to know much about psychology to know that fear of the unknown is the greatest obstacle to change--and the greater the ignorance, the greater the fear," Shoquist says.

"Editors and managers who have experienced the new technology agree that if the staff is properly prepared, there should not be a serious problem. If an editor learns all there is to know about the technology and sees to it that the staff does, too, it need not be traumatic to shift to cold type, optical character reader or even the

VDT. But if you stumble into it without sufficient knowledge of what's involved, you may be in trouble."13

That is exactly what the concern for future study by newspaper leaders is all about: pre-study and pre-planning of alternative possi­ bilities so newspapers won't have to chance despair and defeat on the part of management or frustration and revolt on the part of employees.

Back of the need for future study by news people is the realization that, given already existing information and technique, the develop­ ment of alternative scenarios from such study is more likely than not to encompass the method of attacking future problems. With several plans in hand, future upheavals caused by automation like those seen in some newspaper plants today may be minimized or avoided completely.

Although some of the problems of the backshop have yielded to negotiation, there is no certainty that initial settlements with large newspapers will answer for all U.S. print journalism. One senses in 48

the emotional appeal of a printer like Eugene Mueller the cry of a vast sea of backshop men and women who, confronted with automation­ caused job loss, may yet form one of the biggest challenges to print journalism's future.

It is conceivable that, given the right circumstances, a revolt by backshop people against the onrush of news technology could build a massive wall against print journalism's future development. Coopera­

tive study of this possibility, coupled with a special sensitivity to the view of many backshop people that almost catastrophic changes are being forced upon them by the new technology, is essential if such a possible impasse is to be avoided.

William D. Rinehart, vice president of the American Newspaper Pub­ lishers Association Research Institute, who has been most closely con­ nected with the inter-link between the journalist and technology in that organization, says an initial concern that the present new tech­ nology "would take something away from good journalism turned to joy as the new machines came along.

"Quite frankly," asserts Rinehart, "we have been absolutely amazed that the reactions have been completely opposite our original fears.

Most of the top people in the field of originating good copy took only several days to adapt themselves to using the new technology. Not one of these people has ever complained that the devices limited them. In fact, practically every one of them has stated that they certainly do not want to go back to the old style of doing things."

Though perhaps minimal,_there is one negative factor as Rinehart sees it. This is "with respect to the fact that it [the new technol­ ogy] puts a requirement of professionalism upon every newsman in the 49

business. In years gone by, newsmen handed the composing room opera­ tion rough copy with misspelled words, incomplete sentences and what have you.

"In a newspaper where the composing room people were more profi­ cient in spelling and grammar than those in the newsroom, the printers automatically corrected the errors they saw come through unless they knew the newsman to be a wiseguy. Today, it is a new ballgame and what the man in the newsroom sees on his video display terminal is what is going to be printed in the paper. The 70-year-old composing room speller is being retired."14

Earl W. Foell, managing editor of the Christian Science Monitor, sees no greater risk in the current new technology than did others as past improvements in writing and printing came along.

"Devices such as video display terminals, light pencils, CRTs, are only tools to help writers," Foell contends. "When mastered, they should not loom as obstacles to the writer.

"In one sense, each new tool has presented a certain risk.

Socrates worried that the invention of writing would make it too easy for men to record their thoughts, thus relieving them of the need to develop their memories.

"Gutenberg's invention disturbed some scholars at the time, who feared that letting Everyman learn to read would dilute the quality of the rather select group of writers and thinkers in that age. I don't know that anyone complained similarly about the typewriter or Linotype machine--but I suspect someone did.

"Problems can, and do, arise out of the adoption of new technol­ ogy. The most grievous ones occur when editors forget that journalism 50

centers on the quality of the writer--not on the number of new elec­ tronic toys his people can acquire. For that reason, it makes sense for editors and publishers to do everything possible to help their writers adjust to changes in the tools of their trade." 15

"I can see absolutely no reason to be afraid of new technology," states Evarts A. Graham Jr., managing editor of the~· Louis Post­

Dispatch. "The VDTs apparently are no more difficult to learn to oper­ ate than typewriters are. I suppose the first reporters who had to switch from quill pen to a typewriter might have been afraid of the change, but I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who argues seriously that a pen is more creative than a typewriter. I think the VDTs, etc., will free reporters and editors to be more creative than they are now.

"There is no shortcut for words or phrases, and it is easier to move things around on a cathode ray tube than it is on paper, so short cuts would be discouraged rather than encouraged by the new equipment.

"Any tool can be 'depersonalizing,' including a rock when thrown accurately," Graham points out. "It all depends on how it is used.

Anybody who is on a 'back to Walden' kick is never going to make it on a newspaper, even with our present 19th century technology.

"In the final analysis, this whole discussion is completely aca­ demic. There won't be any newspapers left unless large numbers of blue-collar employees are displaced to cut costs and to give writers and editors a bigger share of the newspaper's revenues."16

Others suggest that, although it will be a definite step forward, the introduction of new technology may involve problems of the psyche:

"I suggest that a crucial factor, -perhaps the crucial factor . . . is the self-perception of the writer," Gerhart D. Wiebe, dean of Boston 51

University's School of Public Communication, believes. "If he [the writer] perceives himself as a cog in a machine, the machine, which is larger than one of its cogs, obviously will dominate him. If he pre­ pares himself well and if he addresses himself with firm purpose to helping in the solution of real and urgent problems, then he will dom­ inate the machine as he now dominates the typewriter."l7

Norris G. Davis, chairman of the Department of Journalism, Univer­ sity of Texas at Austin, sees the new newspaper technology as an all­ around plus for the writer. "I feel the new technology will give much greater emphasis and importance to the writer, lessening the impor­ tance of the copydesk. I see no reason why creativity should not be increased rather than crushed."l8

"I seem to detect a concern for the satisfaction of the writer, as this might relate to electronic, or computer dominance," Stephen D.

Smoke, senior information officer of the Communications Satellite

Corporation, notes. "This will probably happen, but it has actually already happened everywhere in our society.

"It is possible that we do not have enough to do because modern tools make it possible to do a day's work in minutes. Even the auto assembly lines have created a problem. We are getting so much leisure we do not know how to use it, and inflation has made off-duty so expen­ sive we may not be able to afford it.

''We have become so preoccupied with education that we can't get a car fixed, but anyone who reads a few books has all the answers to the world's problems. There truly seems to be dissatisfaction everywhere, socially, economically, politically, and even morally.

"However, for the writer, the thinker, the creator, the philoso- 52

pher, I believe the future holds opportunities for enlightenment and satisfaction that were never before available on so broad a front."l9

Thus it seems most editors, educators and others working in the field of mass communications are happy with the new technology now ap­ pearing in newsrooms. There are, however, other voices with views on

the subject. A number of copy editors, reporters, bureau chiefs and other newsroom personnel have been troubled by the super-positive pic­

ture salesmen and some editors have painted of the new technology. As some of them use the new machines, their minds are troubled.

"I just don't make the last-minute changes--those little touches

that sometimes give an extra sparkle to the story," a feature writer on a metropolitan daily admits. With a scanner system in the newsroom, this writer feels "it's the mechanics of the thing, I guess. That cou­ pled with the fact I just can't make those little last-minute adjust­ ments in the copy I made before. 11 20

Bob McGilvray of the Wall Street Journal's Washington Bureau, has some serious doubts about part of the new technology. "Anyone who can edit copy with a pencil can learn to edit with a CRT (cathode ray

tube)," he writes in the Associated Press Managine Editors NEWS. "But if he's much more than a paragraph marker, he'll be taking longer and doing a poorer job.

"CRT does inhibit editing, no matter how proficient an editor be­ comes in operating the machine. It has distinct limitations that be­

come more obvious in ahy drastic editing of a story. Refinements in

the CRT wouldn't be likely to change this much."

McGilvray explains the reason for this belief is that CRT advo­ cates have made false assumptions about dollar savings through use of 53

the machines.

"I contend that CRT advocates haven't any idea of the price we'd be paying to preserve reporters' original keystrokes--in more time spent doing less editing, and in a poorer news product because more original strokes would indeed be getting into the paper. As long as there are deadline pressures, a lot of editing that would be done by pencil, typewriter and tearing and pasting under conventional handling methods won't be done if a CRT system is used," McGilvray declares.

"The more emphasis a paper puts on good editing the less appro­ priate CRT is at the reporter-input level.

"We could all adjust to some [changes on the CRT] ... , but everything on this preserve-the-original-stroke system leans firmly in the direction of not changing the copy. There is no comparable pres­ sure to avoid changing typewritten copy, and an array of takes on pa­ per can be spread out and attacked from many directions.

"If most of what is written is to be sent forward without change, the CRT is indeed a neat system. It's an efficient traffic cop--an automatic switching device that can dispatch a story swiftly. The sys­ tem can handle a fat inventory of copy and allow editors to peek at what's in the system and decide on priorities for spewing it forth.

"For a well-edited newspaper, I suggest that the reporter's ini­ tial strokes be regarded as something cast of soft clay that invites any remolding that can improve the product, rather than something that's cast in metal with an eye toward preservation."21

Although the majority clearly feel the new newsroom technology is a blessing, still the question begs to be answered: "Would introduction of the new technology have gone smoother--would it have come even 54

sooner--had futures groups been laying plans for it in the 1950s or earlier?" Admittedly hypothetical, it is still a good question for, although the move to the new machines has gone amazingly well for the most part, there have been and continue to be problems beyond those caused by printers being replaced by computers.

J. Michael Barrier, an information associate of the Southern News­ paper Publishers Association Foundation, reporting on a Foundation workshop on "The New Technology and the Newsroom" held in Richmond,

Va., in mid-1974, spoke of the problems and fears some newspapers have had in introducing the relatively simple IBM Selectric typewriter, bas­ ic tool of the new technology:

"Despite its simplicity and familiarity, it is a rare newspaper that has installed Selectrics in its newsrooms without fears and mis- givings.

"Some papers have introduced Selectrics gradually, trying to make them a prestige item that would lure other reporters and editors away from their manual typewriters; others have introduced the Selectrics first in those departments--women's news, for example--where resistance to them is lightest.

"Still others have switched to Selectrics cold turkey, forcing even the most reluctant writer to sink or swim. But regardless of the method, the results have been the same: most writers and editors have accepted the change with remarkable ease."22

The words "remarkable ease" could not be used to characterize the conversion from hot to cold type in many a newspaper plant, though.

And introduction of the more complicated of the new newsroom machines has occasioned some notable if infrequent blowups. 55

Reporting on changes still coming in the current wave of new tech­ nology, Barrier states in his workshop report that several of the speakers at Richmond predicted that "pagination," the composing and making up of a full newspaper page with vertical and horizontal justi­ fication on the computer, is almost a reality.

"In effect," Barrier explains, "pagination extends the principle behind the VDTs and scanners, so that machines not only set the stories

in type, but they assemble them on each page. Makeup editors, seated at terminals resembling those of the VDTs, will be able to put an en­

tire newspaper together.

"They will compose pages on computer screens, moving stories and pictures as they see fit; then, when the results are satisfactory, the completed page will be ready for the camera. The number of such make­ up people needed will depend on the size of the paper."

According to L. D. McAlister, managing editor of the Atlanta

Journal, who spoke at the Richmond workshop, pagination should be in use by members of the Newspaper System Development Group before the

end of the 1970s.

With pagination, Barrier further explains, "the makeup editor can see his page exactly as the public will see it. The newsroom's CAM

(composition and makeup terminal) can be connected with the advertis­

ing department's, so that, for example, a makeup editor can avoid fill­

ing a page with pictures when that page also includes an ad full of

photos.

"The makeup editor can learn from his terminal if a story is too

long for its allotted space, or if a headline is too short. The danger always present in pasteup--lost type, sloppiness, stray lines and 56

paragraphs--will be gone. All of these advantages can be summed up by saying that the newsroom's control over each page will be total until

the phototypesetter produces an entire camera-ready page.

"But in fact, there may be no camera-ready page in the near fu­

ture; there may be no hard copy of a page, or of a story, from the time that copy is fed into a scanner or a VDT until it emerges in the print­ ed newspaper. "

Barrier also reports that John H. Colburn of Landmark Communica­ tions, Inc. predicted at the Richmond workshop, " ... printing proc­ esses will some day disappear to be replaced by a printing process so sophisticated that the newsroom will be able to make corrections in a story without interrupting a press run.

"When that stage ·is reached," asserts Barrier, "the distinction between news managers and production managers will have disappeared, and news managers will control all facets of production."23

"Where will the new technology lead us?" many a news person won­ ders. Inherent in that type of question is the realization that our technology may be leading us, rather than the other way around. Edi­ tors and publishers have been strong to point out their insistence that the new machines must fit the man rather than trying to make the man fit the machine. But, one by one, these same news leaders may one day come to wonder if, indeed, the machines are not in some ways leading them around in spite of their best efforts to make things go otherwise.

News people are now taking the machines as they come along. But is this the right direction in which to move? Is there a wall some­ where along this road beyond which the man will have to fit the machine? 57

For the most part, news people are not looking into the future with the purpose of making sure such walls of technological impossi­ bility do not rise up. They have been content to tack their needs to the marvels of the electronic experts, rather than taking long-range looks at what the newspaper business must have to survive and flourish during the rest of this decade, the next, and in the next 50 years.

It is time for widespread planning to begin throughout the news­ paper business, so the machines, and the means to use them effectively, will assure that the newspaper is the complete and desired chronicle of the day's news it should be, not only during the rest of the 1970s, but into the 21st century as well. 58

FOOTNOTES

lLos Angeles Times, 18 August 1974.

2Bos Johnson, "WatcQ. TV, Then Read," The Quill, July, 1974, p. 6.

3Herbert Fredman, "The Media Revolution," Seminar Number 31, (March, 1974), p. 10.

4Robert W. Sarnoff, "The Information Revolution: Breakthrough or Breakdown?" (San Francisco: Radio Corporation of America [1969]), PP• 5-6.

5Ibid., pp. 6, 9-10.

6Ibid., pp. 10, 12-13.

7Robert W. Sarnoff, "The Electronic Revolution, 11 J-M Future II, 1974, p. 13.

8Erik L. Collins and Galen R. Rarick, "Current Offerings in Six Specified Subjects in Accredited (and the largest unaccredited) Schools and Departments of Journalism," Proceedings: Education for Newspaper Journalists in the Seventies and Beyond (Washington, D.C.: American Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation, 1973), pp. 317-20.

9Eugene Gilmore, Robert Root, Modern Newspaper Editing (Berkeley, California: The Glendessary Press, 1971), p. 351.

10Telephone interview with Rick Splittorf, Media General, Inc., 5 August 1974.

11william Greider, "A Craft in Crisis," Seminar Number 31, (March, 1974), pp. 16-17, 20.

12"New York's ITU settlement clears path for automation," Editor and Publisher, 3 August 1974, p. 11.

13Joseph W. Shoquist, "The People Problem," The Quill, November, 1973, p. 23. 59

14william D. Rinehart to Herbert Ford, 29 March 1973, ANPA Research Institute.

15Earl W. Foell to Herbert Ford, 27 March 1973, The Christian Science Monitor.

16Evarts A. Graham, Jr. to Herbert Ford, 4 April 1973, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

17Gerhart D. Wiebe to Herbert Ford, 4 April 1973, Boston Univer­ sity, School of Public Communication.

18Norris G. Davis to Herbert Ford, 20 April 1973, The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Journalism.

19stephen D. Smoke to Herbert Ford, 25 April 1973, Communications Satellite Corporation.

20Interview with Barbara Hand Herrera, San Diego Union-Tribune Co., San Diego, California, 20 August 1974.

21 Bop McGilvray, "Part II: The New Technology--Will it mean better newspapers?" Associated Press Managing Editors NEWS, September, 1974, p. 10.

22J. Michael Barrier, "How the new technology affects newsroom habits," Editor and Publisher, 22 June 1974, p. 50.

23 Ibid. , p. 52. CHAPTER IV

FUTURE FREE?

Interesting as it may be to watch the new, subtly color-coordi­ nated electronic machines at work in the newsrooms and to contemplate

their future, there are other aspects of the newspaper operation to which futures study might be even more productively applied.

One such area is that of the growing antipathy of government

toward the press. While such activity may have seemed to have reached

its height with the attacks of former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew

and the subsequent complex of events leading up to what is known as

11 the Watergate, 11 this is illusory. At the federal, state, county and municipal levels, the press remains under government attack withal­ most unprecedented intensity.

11 Congress and state legislatures may try to make government more

open [to the press] in some ways, but at the same time, widespread at­

tempts are made to shrink press freedom, 11 Alan L. Otten declares in

the Wall Street Journal well after the Watergate stir had subsided with the resignation of President Nixon.

11 Despite all the furor over shield laws, there's still no legis­

lation to protect reporters who don't want to disclose confidential

news sources, and scores of subpoenas have been issued. More courts

are handing down 'gag orders' restricting press coverage of trials.

60 61

Many government agencies seek new ways to keep their business secret.

"The latest newsletter published by the Reporters Committee for

Freedom of the Press, an informal group of journalists who have kept

track of barriers to news coverage, is by far the thickest ever," Otten pointed out, "and while a few items recount press progress against se­ 1 crecy and suppression, most of its items go the other way."

Is this growing picture of press curbs by government only the van­ guard of an all-but-intolerable situation in the 1980s, with probable outright governmental control of the press in the 21st century?

Even a fragmentary recital of government attempts at press stric­

ture in 1974 shows the magnitude of the problem. It also suggests the need of more serious study to cope with the present problem and to de­ velop plans to deal with undoubtedly larger threats in the future.

Some recent press' freedom loss headlines include:

"President Nixon seeks to limit press libel protection." "Justice

Department to bar press from arrest and conviction records," "Watergate

judge bans defendant and witness interviews," "Senate votes to stop

presidential election night news," "Justice Department asks CBS News

contempt for trial sketch," "Arkansas supreme court upholds criminal

libel law for editorial," "Virginia supreme court affirms criminal con­ viction for abortion ad," "Jack Anderson column ordered to disclose

source," "Georgia supreme court bans indictment and trial news re­

ports," "Texas reporters jailed for photos of trial witness," "Cali­

fornia radio station hit with police search of files," Illinois feder­

al court holds secret trial in chambers," "ABC bows to first court-im­

posed ban on TV news," "Florida newswoman gets 8 months in jail for

crime probe."2 62

In spite of a steady movement toward chain newspaper ownership with all its attendant pre-planning for everything from savings on

newsprint to pool purchasing for toilet tissue, the press as a whole

still battles government censorship efforts individually, usually in

the role of fire fighter. The most common aid from colleagues to the

editor under government attack is a flaming editorial which, in the

face of presently mounting criticism from the public sector, seems to

be losing much of its effect. Seldom do editors of papers other than

the one under attack sit down together to plan specific strategies to meet a government threat. Almost never do editors meet corporately to

plan future strategies to parry governmental censorship thrusts.

Does the present, growing number of actions by government toward more press censorship forecast that tomorrow's newspapers will not be

free in the sense we know them today? Burnham P. Beckwith, looking

forward through the next 500 years, makes several important predic­

tions which touch on the question of future press freedom:

"1. All advanced countries will soon begin an ever-intensifying

effort to require all newspapers to give appropriate or equal space to

competent advocates of all sides of every controversial social issue,

especially during electoral campaigns. As a result all newspapers will

become less and less biased or partisan throughout the next 500 years.

"2. The continued growth of newspaper monopoly and of public de­ mand for well-rounded discussion of controversial issues will result in

ever-increasing government control over private newspapers in advanced

non-communist countries. Capitalist governments will increasingly re­

quire equal or fair treatment of competing political parties and candi­

dates, more free space for campaign speeches and advertisements, 63

limitation of monopoly profits, refusal of dishonest or misleading ad­ vertisements, etc. In other words, daily newspapers will soon be rec­ ognized and regulated as public utilities.

"3. In backward countries many newspapers will be taken over by

the government before they are treated as regulated utilities. In most advanced capitalist states the press will not be socialized until after it has become a closely regulated public utility. Socialization will initially take various forms--municipal, provincial, and national ownership, consumer co-operatives, producer co-operatives--and by A.D.

2200 nearly all daily papers in the_world will be owned by national governments and edited by professionally chosen journalists.

"4. The rise of socialism has already eliminated most advertis­ ing in newspapers and magazines published behind the Iron Curtain. It will produce similar results in all other countries before 2200. Since most advertising is socially wasteful, special taxes or quotas on ad­ vertising will soon be enacted in some capitalist states and will mul­ tiply and grow thereafter. The gradual elimination of most advertis­ ing from newspapers will equally reduce the space given to publicity stories tied to advertising.

"5~ Radical changes in newspaper news and feature content are in­ evitable. Capitalist newspapers now play up crimes, divorces, scan­ dals, and accidents. Such stories grossly impair the administration of justice and cause an enormous amount of personal embarrassment and un­ happiness. Most witnesses lie or withhold evidence in order to avoid harmful publicity. As men become more intelligent and better educated,

they are sure to limit and eventually prohibit more and more stories liable to have such effects. All criminal and divorce proceedings will 64

become secret before 2100. Even the court decisions will then be transmitted only to officials and private persons who need such infor- mat ion.

"6. The marginal cost of printing and delivering such newspapers

(devoid of advertising, crime and scandal stories, comics, fiction and other non-news items) will be small. Moreover, it will be socially de- dirable to encourage universal reading of them. Hence they will be- . 3 come free goods, financed entirely by taxation, before A.D. 2200."

If in the multi-faceted threat to press freedom in 1974 one sees the first faint glimmer of Dr. Beckwith's predictions emerging, then those who care about the American tradition of a free and unfettered press should encourage a coming together in the study of ways to meet the challenges that can be expected in the future. The battle for press freedom in America is related in some degree to the size of gov- ernment; thus, as we see government continuing to increase in size, there is little reason to believe that the mere change of a President today, or the replacement of a Supreme Court Justice tomorrow will bring a halt to attempts at press censorship.

Changes in freedom of the press in the traditional sense may not be too far in the future if Robert R. Schwarz, executive editor of the

Des Plaines Publishing Company, has his way. In an essay on "The Need to License Journalists and to Support Newspapers with Public Funds,"

Schwarz says journalism is approaching the professionalism of physi- cians and lawyers and, therefore, should have the education and en- forced standards that these professions are required to maintain.

As a first step, Schwarz suggests "a national journalism associ- ation (perhaps an arm of Sigma Delta Chi) which would designate those 65

colleges qualified to teach 'professional' journalism.

"This association would be mentor and monitor of journalism per­ formance and ethics. Like physicians, graduates would serve one-year internships on newspapers sanctioned by the journalism schools.

"Journalists would be licensed only after satisfactory completion of both the schooling and the internship," Schwarz continues. "Before being licensed, the thousands of already-established journalists today, regardless of academic background or experience, would still have to successfully pass the same examinations, including any 'character' test the national journalism association might require."

According to publisher Schwarz, enforcement would come from a state or federal agency whose statutory power would be limited solely and simply to making sure that anyone engaged by any newspaper of gen­ eral circulation in the writing, editing or managing of news be li­ censed. "The agency," Schwarz contends," would in no way have any au­ thority to regulate news."

According to Schwarz's thesis, once the journalists are taken care of by licensing, the newspapers will come next. To "keep them honest,"

Schwarz would "remove them from financial considerations which may taint their editorial motives by levying an annual tax on the citizen­ ry to wholly support the local newspaper."

As an example of his plan, Schwarz cites "a city of 43,000 resi­ dents who are served by a newspaper for whiGh 6,500 persons pay $5.50 annually to read." He believes. that a comparable amount could be raised by a tax levied on all residents based on real-estate assess­ ments.

Classified and display advertising "would be published as a public 66

service, with that revenue used for tax rebates. All ads would be sized and positioned somewhat uniformly and on pages without editorial content so that no 'outside interest' could unduly influence either the reader or the working staff."

An advisory board would have to go to either city hall, the county or the electorate for fudget approval and tax levy increases, but

"Whatever the governmental structure, it would have no regulatory power other than creating a general journalism code (similar perhaps to that of the American Society of Newspaper Editors). The code would be su­ preme to any created by the local advisory board."

Charging reporters with ethical responsibility and public finan­ cial support of the newspapers would, Schwarz holds, "bring about a sense of fairness to the press."

A final feature of Schwarz's plan would be the election of a

"Community Newspaper Caucus" which would be self-perpetuating and which would appoint or nominate residents for election to serve terms as a

"Community Newspaper Advisory Board." The board would employ an edi­ tor, set forth the general purpose of the newspaper and meet regularly with the editor in the relationship of trustees and chief executive officer.

"The nature of the caucus and advisory board, each of which would have at least one seasoned journalist, would [be to] keep out of the newspaper politics and favoritism and insure, by simple virtue of eye­ balling regularly with the editor, that the newspaper remained respon­ sible to the community's needs."4

Many a journalist may shudder at the thought of control possibili­ ties in the Schwarz proposal, but the future will see much more of the 67

same, which suggests the increasing need for futures study groups with­ in the newspaper business to meet such challenges.

In the future, newspapers can also expect to get less and less sympathy from the public in their battles with government censorship attempts. There are built-in reasons why the public now more often turns its back on the press in its struggle over censorship by govern­ ment, and why the public is increasingly critical of the press gener­ ally. Newspapering, in a growing number of cities, has become big business. It is hard for the average citizen to remember that back of the news corporation's slick-covered, full-color annual report there is a group of people--small in number to the corporate total, perhaps-­ who are concerned about and deeply committed to the concept of a free and responsible press.

What will the newspaper business do with its big-business image in the future as public criticism of it continues to grow? Is such a pos­ sibility even considered a problem as corporate executives wrangle over what amount the next quarter's dividend will be? Certainly, newspaper futures study groups should concern themselves with such questions, for they relate directly to whether or not freedom of the press will sur­ vive in America in the coming decades.

Another reason for a loss of public interest when the press and government come to court over the question of press freedom is the stiff-necked attitude many editors have concerning criticism. John Q.

Public sees the press with its verbal pants at half-mast on occasion, sometimes in a most embarrassing way. If he doesn't see it directly, he has only to pick up Media and Consumer or one of the other growing number of press criticism journals to find more than enough. But when 68

does he see an admission of guilt by the press? Rarely, if ever, al­ though in all fairness it must be admitted a slight change is creeping in.

"What good will that do, other than cause the public to lose what­ ever trust it now has in the press?" someone asks. For one thing, it might elicit an occasional, "Hey, look, the Daily Bugle is human after all. They made a mistake and--whatta ya know--they've admitted it, right here on Page One. What about that!"

"It is a truism, albeit a contentious one, that in the United

States there is no tradition of sustained, systematic, and intellec­ tually sound criticism of the press," argues Dr. James W. Carey, dir­ ector of the Institute of Communication Research at the University of

Illinois.

"The press is certainly on~ of our most important institutions but in serious attention it ranks slightly ahead of soccer and slightly be­ hind baseball," Dr. Carey contended in an address delivered to the

ANPA Conference on "Education for Newspaper Journalists in the Seven­ ties and Beyond."

"The press is attacked and often vilified, but it is not subject to sustained critical analysis--not in the public, and rarely within universities or the press itself. We are all the poorer for this-­ journalists, teachers, students and citizens--and the creation of a sustaining tradition of press criticism is a useful area where the press and schools of journalism may cooperate."

Attempting to discuss this point with journalists, Dr. Carey said,

"I have found myself launched into abrasive discussions about press councils, Greek vice presidents and jailed newsmen--interesting topics 69

all--but rather beside the important point of criticism.

"The very idea of criticism has become anathema to journalists and the word itself has become a semantic beacon which unerringly attracts a host of emotional moths, some legitimate and some merely reflections of the psychology of the beleaguered.

"I need not tell you all that publishers, editors and journalists feel encircled by an indifferent judiciary, a hostile administration, an untrusting public, and even some apostates in the lower ranks. The press, so I am often told, has developed its own 'credibility gap,' caesarism is rampant in the White House, and the public cannot distin­ guish between the Bill of Rights and the codes of the Inquisition. The subject of criticism has become rather too emotionally charged and the press at its conventions and in its editorial pages is reacting with the grim faced seriousness and beleaguered patriotism of Robert Taylor

11 in the final scene of 'Bataan. '

The press can never gain the insights criticism will bring from a defensive posture, asserts Dr. Carey. And the press itself must be the one to initiate and sustain the critical process.

" . • . the basic critical act in journalism is public scrutiny of the methods by which journalists define and get what we now call news and the conventions by which they deliver it to the public," he stated.

"This criticism must not only be sustained and systematic, as with literary criticism, but it must also occur in the pages of the news­ paper itself from the audience that regularly consumes, uses, or di­ gests what is presented.

"Who should do it? In a certain sense, everyone. I have suggest­ ed that the newspaper itself must bring this critical community into 70

existence. It must search out and find within its public those laymen that can, and are interested in making a critical response to what they see and read daily.

"Hopefully such people will come from all strata of the public and represent its major segments. But such a community will not come into existence if the press passively awaits its appearance. The press must recognize that it has a stake in the creation of a critical community and then use its resources to foster it."5

Are newspaper editors and publishers wise enough to start planning for such productive criticism? Or will they be content to go on trying to put out the debilitating brush fires of public criticism which may one day burst into an inextinguishable conflagration?

Although it has almost become traditional to hold that press free­ dom will one day be lost to encroaching government, and it is currently popular in some circles to suggest that it will be taken away by a dis­ illusioned public, it is just as likely that its demise will come by neither of these. Events of global significance are now in the process of movement which may bring future danger, even death, to our freedom of the press from most unexpected sources.

McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Foundation, in a thoughtful looking back at the last quarter of the 20th century from the prognos­ ticatory vantage point of the year 2024, has suggested possible future events of world-wide importance, any one of which by slight shifts from his view could cause the United States to give up much of the press freedom it has long taken for granted.

Although Bundy's view of the future insists that relatively little of the press freedom we now enjoy will be lost through the chain of 71

events he foresees, it is just as arguable that under only slightly different conditions most or all of it may end.

The Bundy thesis suggests a series of great famines during the years 1979-81. "They came a little earlier than most experts had pre­ dicted," he wrote, "because for three years in a row the world's har­ vests were bad." His estimate of death caused by the famines was set at 65 million, "but there are independent critics who believe these figures are kept too low because of a lingering respect for the sensi­ tivities of the governments whose peoples suffered most."

The famines were complicated by what Bundy calls the Nuclear

Events of 1984. In those years, says Bundy, the United States unwit­ tingly reacted against China to the nuclear devastation of an American city by terrorists. China, watching Russia even more closely than she does today, took the American admission of error as a Russian deception and promptly launched a nuclear attack a Russian city. The "Summit of

Vladivostok" miraculously brought the three super powers into peaceful accord again, but the events led to the establishment of the World

Nuclear Authority. Pressure from India, trading nuclear guarantees for famine relief, caused the formation of the World Food Commission.

Deliberations led to the Population Protocols of 1988 "under which

70 states, including the 30 largest, pledged themselves to achieve sta­ ble populations at specific.levels," wrote Bundy.

"Police measures" by the "Founding Five" nations enforced the protocols in Bundy's future world. A "Great Covenant of Survival" was signed in 1989, and, as Bundy postulates, "remains in force 35 years later and has gone from strength to strength."

Although he sees no diminution of liberty, Bundy does acknowledge 72

some loss. "So we do well to remember that we have paid some price in liberty, at least as it was understood in 1974," he says. Those con­ cerned with the subtleties of press freedom in America in such a state­ ment will likely see a considerable departure from the freedoms they desire.6

The need for interdependence of the United States with other na­ tions, so dramatized by events of recent years, certainly forecasts the formation of world regulatory commissions and bodies such as Bundy sug­ gests. Whether they come in 1979 or in 1990 is not the issue; they will come. And as they do, and the United States enters into member­ ship in them, there is every likelihood that some American liberties will have to be sacrificed on the altar of the common good of all na­ tions.

The threat of world famine, caused by exploding populations, may well drive many nations, including the United States, to an agreement that would have sorely grieved our founding fathers. News stories and broadcasts in any way threatening of the stability of the international effort to win the wars of overpopulation and famine might well be cen­ sored with the blessing of most of the members. While such acts might cut deeply into. the fabric of American liberty, they would cause scarcely a ripple in other lands. After all, few if any other members of the world community of nations trouble themselves with the niceties of personal and press freedom as found in the United States.

Many voices in journalism are in agreement that the press is in trouble in 1974. The government would like to see embarrassing news stories suppressed; the public would like to read only good news and forget about the bad. To meet the government harassment the press is 73

entering the courts to contest acts of suppression and leveling edito­

rial guns at governmental antagonists.

In seeking to defend itself against public hostility the press is mounting an attack which may or may not answer the charges. This ef­

fort emphasizes the need for accuracy and fairness by reporters, print­

ing more letters from readers and giving them better display, labeling

analysis and opinion pieces more clearly, balancing op-ed page opin­

ions more carefully, printing corrections more quickly and more promi­

nently, appointing ombudsmen to act on readers' complaints, and coop­

erating with local and state press councils where these are being

formed.

Good as it is as a start, this attack may not be good enough to

assure victory in the battle for press freedom. Part of the trouble with such an attack is that it is being mounted in the traditional

strategy the press has always employed for carrying its battles in the

past--one editor here, another there, fighting it out alone. Little

effort has been made to draw together toward a united front. Sadder still, newspaper leaders are thinking almost exclusively about the pre­

sent; scant attention is being given to setting battle strategies for

the future.

If there is to be a future for the newspaper, it must begin with a realization that tomorrow will not take care of itself. The problems

of onrushing technology, inroads by electronic journalism, public crit­

icism and government harrassment will not go away. Nor can they be

treated as problems confined to our present day. These problems will

continue and be joined by others in the future. Without consistent

study toward their solution, such a conglomerate of press problems may 74

sound the death knell for freedom in print journalism in America.

As truly as it may be said that the future will not take care of itself, it may also be said that the future belongs to those who plan for it. Print journalism now has an opportunity to study and plan for its future; it may not have such opportunity much longer. In many in­ stances the problem trends are still reversible. Ignored much longer they may be forever out of control. Planning strategies for the fu­ ture will aid in solving both present and future problems, for today's future is as close as tomorrow morning. 75

FOOTNOTES

1Alan L. Otten, "Press Shows Its Capacity for Myopic Self-Delu­ sion," Wall Street Journal, quoted in National Observer, 14 September 1974, p. 15.

2The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Press Censorship Newsletter Number IV, (April-May, 1974), Cover.

3Burnham Putnam Beckwith, Ph.D., The Next 500 Years (New York: Exposition Press; 1967), pp. 209-11.

4Robert R. Schwarz, "The Need to License Journalists and to Support Newspapers with Public Funds," Newspaper Publisher's Auxiliary, 10 September 1974, pp. 1-2.

5Dr. James W. Carey, "Journalism Schools Must Contribute to the Development of a Systematic Evaluation and Public Criticism of the Newspaper Press," Proceedings: Education for Newspaper Journalists in the Seventies and Beyond (Washington, D.C.: American Newspaper Publish­ ers Association Foundation, 1973), pp. 258, 277.

~cGeorge Bundy, "After the Deluge, the Covenant," Saturday Review World, 24 August 1974, pp. 18-20, 112, 114. · CHAPTER V

THROUGH THE STAR GATE

His senior science writer, Neil Dister, was very much on Mel

Kendrick's mind as he arrived at his office in the World Herald build­ ing that overcast mid-morning. "We haven't heard from Neil for over a week now," he thought. "I'd better check up on what's happening."

At his desk Kendrick punched two buttons on a large console which featured a stunning array of lights, switches and buttons. As he punched the buttons, the wall opposite his desk came alive with .a holo­ graphic view around the desk at News Central. Clinton Grayson, in charge of News Central today, looked up as Kendrick's light began to blink on his desk.

"Good morning, Mel," he greeted. "Everything in the shop looks good so far today, although the weather's lousy. What can I do for you?"

"It's Dister. Have we gotten anything from him yet today? He hasn't filed anything for more than a week now. Anything from him?"

"Nope. Nothing during the last shift, and nothing since I came in at five this morning. But those fellows he's with, they can sometimes be a pretty slow bunch, you know. We can send up a call if you like, but I'd wait another couple of days. He's dealing with tricky stuff up there. It's probably taking time to put it all together."

76 77

"Well, maybe you're right," the managing editor agreed. "Let's see, how long did we budget him for up there? Do you remember,

Clint?"

"Three months, I think. We can get a print-out on it if you want.

He's been gone a little over a month now."

Grayson looked around his desk, then he reached for a large paper in one of the bins beside him. "Oh, here's a report Berger called up last night on Neil; he must have been wondering just like you. Let's see--Neil left Grissom Space Port on the 23rd--just about a month ago.

He arrived at Megaluna One two days later. Then he hopped over to

Darkside Five the next day. So he's really had only about 20 working days up there, Mel. And he's filed two prelims already, one on the

29th, the other on the sixth. I'd say he's pretty well accounted for."

"OK, thanks Clint. Guess I'm just hoping he '11 get enough for the full piece quickly, maybe too quickly. Berger mentioned that Driskell, the Courier's space guy, is leaving for a visit to the Darkside in about a' week. I don't want him to get wind of this thing until he gets up there. That way he won't have the back-up stuff Neil has had be-

I fore leaving. We should have the story to ourselves all the way if

Neil can get something solid to us soon. This is too good a thing to get beat out on, especially when we've had all this lead time to our- selves up there.

'~ou're probably right, Clint. He'll be sending something any time now. Thanks for the update."

"It is a big story," Kendrick realized as he touched the buttons on the console beside the desk. The scene at News Central faded from his wall. The story promised to rival the biggest space breaks of the 78

21st century if Dister's hunch paid off. If it didn't, the World

Herald would be out a considerable hunk of money for nothing.

About two months previously, Dister had been making a routine con­ tact with some of the crew members just back from their tour of duty at receiving stations on the moon's dark side. He learned from one of them that they had been picking up some mysterious signals from about half a billion miles out in space. There was no scheduled mission in that area, and yet the signals, which were gradually increasing in in­ tensity, were almost certainly being emitted by earthlings. All the tramsmissions were on Earth standard frequencies.

Although ordered not to talk about the receptions, one of the monitors, who was quitting his job anyway, had volunteered the infor­ mation.

"You know what I think," he told Dister. "I think it is one of those three deep probes they launched tpward Titan three years ago.

We've heard several sentence fragments clearly so far. In one of them we got the words 'Titwo' and 'returning' twice. Everyone at our sta­ tion believes those signals are coming from the second Titan probe,

Titwo, and that it is returning to Earth.

"I don't know why they're keeping the lid on this thing, but if I were you, and wanted to get that story, I'd get my paper to send me on a trip to Darkside Five," the monitor had advised.

"What a story it will be if it really is one of those probes on the way back to Earth," thought Kendrick. "If the probe does get safely back it will be almost unbelievable--and it'll be another quan­ tum jump in deep space exploration."

Kendrick recalled that less than a decade ago the best of the 79

space people were predicting that it would take 50 years to adequately prepare to fly a human past Titan, the largest of Saturn's moons. And then, just five years later, they had launched the three fully manned

Titan probes. At the time, some of the more conservative space experts had criticized the effort as premature.

Six months after the launch, all contact with the vehicles had stopped within a few days of each other. After a year of no further contact, the three probes, each carrying a crew of three, had been giv­ en up as lost in space.

Now, with his spece writer sitting on the dark side of the moon listening in on the unadulterated transmissions the monitors were re­ ceiving from deep space, Mel Kendrick was holding fire on one of the biggest stories of his newspaper career. Certainly it was big enough to give the World Herald a real edge on its competition if the story broke as he was hoping.

When would Dister's quiet rounds of the listening posts, the radio and X-ray telescope facilities manned by the radio astronomers, final­ ly pay off, Kendrick wondered? When would his space writer be able to piece together the real meaning of those fragmented sentences filtering back through the millions of miles of space? Although he had tried to dismiss it as just another story, Kendrick could feel the pressure building inside as he waited for word from Dister.1

"I want this thing absolutely vacuum tight," he had told his News

Central editors about Dister's Titan story. "We won't move a thing until we all agree it has the substance to stand up against.anything that can be thrown at it. Our biggest break in the whole thing is that it is a privately financed probe. At least we don't have to fight 80

government on this one."

Government--those miserable "Government Overrides" in every Story

Design cubicle in the plant and in the Pagination computers--government control was the one most galling part of Kendrick's job. He had been in newspapering for nearly 40 years and he could still remember, if faintly, the battles for freedom to handle the news freely and respon­ sibly, battles that had been fought and finally lost to government in the early 1990s.

It all started, he remembered, with government officials coming up with the idea that since FCC regulation of the electronic media--which had been going on even before Mel was born--was working so well, some similar agency should also work well for print journalism, since, as the government repeatedly contended, "so many new problems are surfac­ ing in the newspaper business." The fact that public criticism of the press was rising to a shout at about that time didn't help matters much. Somehow the newspapers had seemed incapable of really getting together to fight back at the situation.

By the late 1990s, with the public outcry continuing, newspaper chains accounting for well over half of all newspaper circulation in the United States and thereby bringing the charge of big business tak­ ing over the news, and the secrecy boys in government claiming "unprec­ edented and unconstitutional liberties" being taken by the press, the lid had finally blown off.

Congress went into a long and tough battle over the charges and the counter charges, but it had finally passed legislation creating a

Federal Information Agency to oversee "the freedom and conduct of print journalism." The White House, bowing to tremendous organized public 81

pressure, quickly signed the measure putting the new watchdog agency to work.

In purpose the new government unit seemed both noble and simple.

Newsmen, however, took it for what it really was right from the start:

censorship. As the years slipped by, that ugly specter began to rise

from the mass of regulations to confuse, frustrate, confound and infu­ riate editors and reporters.

Just after the new century had begun, use of the much discussed

and often threatened Government Overrides had been authorized. They were simply a computerized dictionary of "No-no's" which automatically

canceled out a writer's words or sentences which were critical of gov­

ernment. A series of hard-fought Supreme Court battles between 2005 and 2010 failed to beat back the government's case, largely because of

the sentiment against the press then running in the country. Finally, on July 1, 2011, the GOs became a permanent part of the American jour­ nalistic scene.

"Well, we fought 'em," Kendrick sighed at the memory of the bat­

tles against the government info~mation agency and its thought-control devices. "We fought 'em hard. BuY ·the· people just weren 1 t wi-th us any

longer. Evidently we were feeding them too much information about too many things--much of it trivia, I'll admit--instead of printing enough of those things that really counted.

"Maybe if we'd spent a little more time explaining what that con­

cept we used to call 'freedom of the press' was all about, rather than

taking it so much for granted ... maybe if we'd done more of that we wouldn't be running stories like the one we did yesterday, the govern­ ment patiently explaining to the people the need for drastic action on 82

a problem they didn't even know they had. The saddest thing about it all is that we in the press didn't know it existed either! That's how far this government control thing has gotten out of hand!"

There was just no way of consistently getting around those miser­ able overrides, Kendrick knew. He still vividly remembered the day in

2014 when the government inspectors found the tiny adjustments his pro­ duction chief--at his orders--had made to see if the system could be fooled enough to allow at least some copy to slip by. The scene that day had led to an FIA threat to suspend World Herald publication.

Kendrick hadn't tried to do much altering after that.

The only crack in the government's override system, a small one to be sure, seemed to be that their programmers sometimes couldn't feed their dictionary new control instructions fast enough to keep up with a couple of Kendrick's sharpest writers. Constantly changing their style, and drawing on the latest data from diverse sources, these writ­ ers could sometimes get critical thoughts by--until counter instruc­ tions got to the override dictionary. This one fleeting ray of hope for even contrived freedom caused Kendrick to pay the highest prices for outstanding writers, and to keep them constantly studying and training once they were on the job so they could play their subtle if minimal role of government antagonist.

At least a quarter of Kendrick's staff of 70 reporters and writ­ ers were kept in special training situations--fellowships, advanced de­ gree study, official leaves, sabbaticals and extended seminars. All the rest were putting in a minimum of two pours each day at the infa­ scanners, constantly searching for new concepts and facts amid the mountains of information, with which they could improve their work 83

generally and keep ahead of the Government Overrides in particular.

Kendrick's thoughts about the past were cut short by an intermit­

tent blue glow on his desk. He punched on his wall screen, and as he

did so a bank of sterile-looking computers, with a man beside them,

came into view--Bill Hollaway, the World Herald's Transcom chief.

"Hi, Bill, what's the good word today?" Kendrick asked.

"Thought you'd like to know that we've been ahead of the Courier

for two hours now on the discovery of a new mariculture plateau off western Australia," Hollaway announced. "I've been monitoring their

transmissions right along and they haven't got a thing. Old Stan

Beeler out there in Perth must have been on.his toes to get that piece

in here without anyone else moving on it. The wires, nobody, seems to have it yet."

"That's great. We could stand more pieces like that. By the way,

Bill, I heard we had a two-minute outage about a half hour before we

finaled out last night. What happened, anyway? 11

"It was a switchover error at the Riverbank station. Some nut

punched the wrong buttons on their power diet. It knocked everything using more than 50,000 kw's of power out until they could refeed the numbers."

"Yeh, well, you probably heard we got about 100 unhappy print-outs within 10 minutes after it happened. Next time you talk with those

fellows over at Riverbank, tell them to fire that guy with the numbers

problem. They won't be listening to you, but it'll make me feel better.

"But listen, aren't they supposed to go to one of their back-up

power units if an outage like that occurs?" 84

"Yes, they are," responded Hollaway. "But they say they just had not programmed for this particular kind of a human thing. They didn't think it could happen--now they know it can. They've got their pro­ grammers working overtime on it right now so it'll never happen again."

"Well, good enough," Kendrick agreed. "And by the way, Bill, thanks for the good job you've been doing. The figures I've been read­ ing here tell me we've picked up 2,100 new subscribers this month al­ ready. That means the word is getting around that the World Herald is there when you want it.

"I'm coming down your way in a while, and when I do I'd like to know if the Courier has moved that mariculture story by then or not.

See you later, Bill."

Mel punched off the w~ll.screen, pushed away from his desk and headed toward Story Design. He wanted to find out from Arnold

Reinhold, chief of the section, what the results of their latest brain stimulation studies were. Reinhold had been working closely with two company physicians experimenting with the use of a highly improved vincamine on two of the World Herald's writers in an effort to enhance their brain capacity. The tests, which had now been in progress for about eight months, were designed to find out if writers using the im~ proved drug could narrow information and write copy significantly bet­ ter than those using only the cerebral surge implants. The implants themselves were now standard with all writers on the World Herald.

When scientists first introduced the idea of implanting electronic stimulators directly into the human brain near the end of the 20th cen­ tury, there had been a big public outcry. Gradually, though, the re­ searchers proved there were no long-term ill effects, and that 85

reasoning was enhanced tremendously during stimulator activation. When

these facts came out, adverse public reaction gave way to quick ac-

ceptance of the tiny stimulators by both business and industry. Gov-

ernment had been using the devices before the 20th century had ended.

By 2004, when the World Herald started using them, the implants were

widely accepted.

Had the implants, with their ability to stimulate the brain to

superhuman capacity, not come along, Kendrick knew the task of his

writers would have become all but impossible. Informational research­

ers had produced screeners, filters and sorters of an amazing variety

and ability, but the best of these had come short of the basic need of

the writer because they failed to provide humanistic quality in the in­

formation digests they produced. The brain implant, with its enhance­

ment of more of the unused portion of the brain, allowed the writer to

select quickly from the output of the electronic screening devices and

to bring the most humanly important aspects to the surface.

During the last two decades of the 20th century, information had

begun to flood into news offices in such a torrent that no single per-

. son, operating unaided, could extract from the growing mass what was

needed for a single, well-rounded story in a week, much less in time to

meet a daily's many deadlines. And so the electronic filters had been

employed in an effort to reduce the ever-deepening ocean of information

to proportions that could be more easily funneled into the best possi­

ble story.

But the electronic ..equipment, while reducing and digesting the

information to otherwise manageable proportions, still left the writ­

er with the nagging worry that it had filtered out the one kernel of 86

fact or incident that would make the story really come alive. This

fear, coupled with the fact that the electronic gear could only narrow

information down from a huge mountain to a somewhat smaller mountain in digested form, still left too much work to be done to meet deadlines.

The writer needed assurance as he worked with the digests that in­

formation which he alone considered important had not been discarded by

the machines. He also needed the capacity to filter through the di­ gests more quickly.

So the idea of the brain stimulators had become increasingly at­

tractive. As miniaturization and medical science were more success-

fully combined, it soon became possible to attach tiny stimulation units within the human skull in a simple procedure. These devices were capable of stimulating thought and enhancing over-all brain capacity to previously undreamed-of levels.

With use of the brain stimulators there had come many questions, of course. To news executives one of the most important of these was a concern whether the writer's brain would develop "mental flab" after

prolonged stimulation during the preparation of complex stories. It was also feared that other areas of the writer's life would become val­ ueless in the face of his "superman" posture when he activated the

cerebral surge and went spinning off into galaxies of information in his Story Design cubicle. Neither of these nor scores of other pos­

sible problems actually developed once the writers started using the

implants.

As Kendrick and the World Herald management staff wrestled their way through what was for them a maze of moral considerations about the brain stimulators, they discussed but quickly rejected the idea of also 87

using an oncoming and highly improved generation of drugs to further

increase the expertise of their writers. A nagging memory of world­ wide drug problems in the dim past of the 20th century had made them

shy away from the possibility. But with the passing years the pres­

sures kept building to develop greater efficiency and speed so the pa­

per could keep ahead of its competition. During the years of the sec­ ond decade of the new century the paper's executives returned time and again to the subject of drugs as a way to provide thought utilization beyond what the electronic brain stimulators could give.

There were many fears when the question of using drugs at the pa­ per finally came under really serious discussion. But the continually greater amounts of new knowledge pouring into the newsroom, and the problem of its assimilation by the readers made some of the executives overcome their apprehensions in favor of using the new technique. The

exploding nature of new information put a tremendous strain upon the paper's managing editor.

"How are we going to make sure, with all this information pouring

in on us, that we are giving the reader the right knowledge so he will know where the real problems are?" Kendrick had asked the paper's man­ agement team one day in 2018. "If we don't give him an intelligent view of the real problems, how can he be a part of their solution? The

trouble is, frankly, we are getting so much information these days, we

just don't have the human capacity to evaluate it properly.

"Is what we are feeding our readers in the way of news really worth knowing?" he asked the executives. "With so much new knowledge crossing our desks, we just can't be sure what we are passing on is what our readers should be getting if they are to help in solving the 88

big problems that are all around us. The entertainment function we are not worried ab.out--there is more than enough of that.

"On the one hand, we can't discuss the government in a truly crit­ ical framework. On the other, we are drowning in too much trivia about everything else. And, yet, we've got to get faster and wiser if we are going to keep the World Herald ahead of our competition. With the air literally exploding with new information, I'm not sure we are doing the job we should.

"The one best answer to both speed up our news handling and to present quality in the paper is to start doing some experimental work on use of the new drug. None of the other papers has gotten into it yet, and for the World Herald to be first would give us a real advan­ tage.

"The scientists tell me that the drug will give us a harmless, sort of super enhancement in our writers. The drug will give them the ability to narrow masses of information better than anything we are now doing with the digesters and brain stimulators. It will also allow our writers to categorize the information more quickly into its logical segments, analyze the segments as to greater or lesser value to human­ kind, select wisely from the analyses of those portions most appropri­ ate to a given situation, and then the drug will help our people write a story that is most likely to have the greatest consequence to the readers. I see a hope, and it is certainly the only hope I can see for the near future, for survival of the World Herald by starting such ex­ perimental work at once."

In the end, Kendrick's reasoned, persuasive appeal had its effect on the management team. They authorized the drug experiments. And 89

now, as he stood listening to Reinhold of Story Design, Kendrick was

pleased that the executives had authorized the experiments and that

they were going so well.

"The testing looks like it is going to be a real success," report­

ed Reinhold. "We've got a few more smaller tests to complete before we can say for sure that this thing is completely successful. But you've been watching the results so far, Mel. You know that these fel­

lows now on the drug are doing work far superior to the others. And

so far they've been feeling better all around, mentally and otherwise,

than the others. When they're on the drug and using the cerebral surge

at the same time, they can design stories in an unbeatable way!

"The doctors believe the drug has absolutely no harmful effects

on the men up to this point," Reinhold explained. "They claim there

should not be any later on either. If these two fellows are still writing at their present level, and maintaining the same quality of

life they now have 90 days from now, then the doctors feel we can switch some of the others on the staff over to the vincamine program."2

The news from Reinhold put a jaunty spring in Kendrick's step as he moved through Pagination to see Bill Hollaway in Transcom. Beyond

the glassed wall on his left he could see Clint Grayson hard at work in

News Central on plans for this evening's 40th edition.

Things had changed tremendously for the World Herald with the com­

ing of cable transmission to the paper, Kendrick mused as he paused a moment to watch Grayson at the desk. Four editions a day had been tops

for the paper before they started using cable about 10 y~ars ago. Now

50 editions were moving out daily, from five in the morning until

10:40 at night, an edition every 20 minutes. 90

The development of recyclable soft vinyls, and the invention of

the home information console had made it all possible. Now there were

no presses to worry about as in the past century, no toting of tons of

newsprint all over the city, no hassles with labor unions over press

operation and delivery.

By 2010 the paper had become a smooth....;functioning, totally auto­ mated operation. Of course, there were still problems, plenty of them.

Control by government was by far the biggest, to K~ndrick's thinking.

But the long-time headaches such as newsprint supply, press and deliv­

ery run-ins with the unions, and the need for greater speed in moving

the news to the consumer were pretty well gone. Now every employee of

the paper was a part owner of the operation. They were extremely care­

ful in voting raises or of even thinking about walking off the job when

such moves might jeopardize the World Herald's competitive position.

Now the paper had a crack corps of reporters assigned to permanent

stations throughout the city on an around-the-clock basis. Their facts and impressions flowed into the World Herald's central computer and

then, oh demand, were called up in Story Design. There the facts were

displayed by the writers. The facts were merged into called-up back­

ground information digests on the subject. Then the immediate facts,

the background digests, and the reporter's impressions were blended in­

to one story, or perhaps a main story with straight side bars, or up­

date items such as box scores, at-a-glance copy, agree-disagree boxes, boxed lists of demands, quick reviews or other treatments.

Photographs were electronically transmitted from photographers in

the field into the computer for call-up by the Pagination section as

the paper was being made up. All photocopy, both news and advertising, 91

was presented to the reader holographically.

Using both the electronic digesters and their cerebral surge ca­

pacity, the writers in Story Design could move even the most complex

story from a reporter out of the section in a surprisingly short time.

But the number of stories consumed by the World Herald's 50 editions

each day demanded even greater speed. With the promised help of the new drug, the time used on each story would be made shorter yet.

Punched back into the main computer after final writing, the story moved on to Edit-Set for quick review and setting into columns or other display styles. Again returned to the computer, the story moved to

Pagination where a fast-moving team of make-up artists merged it into pages for the next edition.

Mel Kendrick was proud of his Pagination team. Using the cerebral surges, they could handle the most complex make-over job in just a cou­ ple of minutes when they were on a new edition deadline. That was a real accomplishment when practically all of the advertising and news was changing between deadlines.

The completed pages, fed into the computer once again, were called up by Transcom a moment before the edition deadline. In a blizzard of blinking lights and muted clicks, the new edition moved into the World

Herald's assigned cable and on to the homes of subscr1bers. Exactly one second after Bill Hollaway touched the "Trans" button on a new edi­

tion, any subscriber could order it from his home information console.

Exactly 20 minutes later--for more than 17 hours every day--the subscriber could order the following new edition. The new edition might contain only a few new stories, or it might be an almost com­ pletely new paper--stories, pictures, advertisements--all depending on 92

the news breaks, the time of day, and advertiser demand.

"We haven't missed an edition in five years;" Kendrick bragged to himself as he made his way to Transcom to see Hollaway. "And we've had our share of beats too. Now if we can just ... II His thoughts were cut short by a shout from Bill Hollaway bursting through the door of

Transcom on the run.

"Mel, Clint wants you at News Central right now. They've got a story coming in from Dister. Clint says he's got something big going on up there. You'd better get moving from the way Clint was shouting at me!"

"Thanks Bill," Mel shot as he wheeled for News Central. "That's just what I was thinking," he breathed as he began racing for the desk.

"If Dister would just come through, we'd have one of.the biggest beats of all. Now it looks like we've got it!" 93

FOOTNOTES

lNeil A. Armstrong, "Out of This World," Saturday Review World, 24 August 1974, pp. 32-34, 118.

2Gobind Behari Lal, "Brain-stimulating Chemical Now Man-made," Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, 17 June 1974, sec. A, p. A-14. 94

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