New York Tabloid War Heats Up p.

By: George Garneau

Post's top editors defect to the Daily News; key Daily News staffers quit amid Guild's call for a boycott against owner sp.

TURMOIL AND UNCERTAINTY gripped the New York tabloid war as new owners of the New York Post and Daily News locked in a potentially deadly battle.
As E&P went to press, Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman won a major victory by capturing the top newsroom managers from Steven Hoffenberg's Post.
Hoffenberg called Zuckerman "a vulture," filed a lawsuit, and offered free classified ads to job seekers and to employers looking for workers.
Meanwhile, the Daily News lost a core of key news staff when a handful of its most recognized reporters gave their notice in a dispute between Zuckerman and the Newspaper Guild local.
As details emerged in the press about Hoffenberg's history of investigations and court judgments, the News hired Post editor Lou Colasuonno to replace Jim Willse as the top editor at the News. Colasuonno brought with him Post managing editor James Lynch and metro editor Richard Gooding. Columnist Mike McAlary also defected to the News.
Post employees have swallowed a 20% pay cut for a month to stanch losses after Peter Kalikow threatened to close the paper because its chief lender cut off credit. Kalikow, who is himself in personal bankruptcy, offered the ultimatum to buy time to find a buyer. Hoffenberg, who has taken over day-to-day control pending a final agreement to acquire the paper, has vowed to restore half the pay cut.
It is widely believed the city cannot support three tabloids. The Post and Daily News have staggered from crisis to crisis over the past few years. New York Newsday, the city edition of the successful suburban tabloid Newsday, is losing money for its Times Mirror Co. parent while awaiting the fate of its less wealthy tabloid rivals, who have so far continued to defy the odds and survive.
Meanwhile, Zuckerman is fighting another battle closer to home. After effectively breaking the Guild when he bought the News from bankruptcy last month, he is being vilified by the union as a "racist" and "union buster" who has thrown older and minority workers out in the streets.
Strongly denying both charges, Zuckerman said support from nine other News unions hardly indicated union busting, and the paper's racial makeup has not changed since he took over.
Despite a conspicuous lack of support from other unions, the Guild has started a "corporate campaign" against the Daily News and Zuckerman's U.S. News & World Report, The Atlantic, and his real estate holdings.
The Guild, the only News union without a contract, also suffered the most severe cuts of the paper's 10 unions: About 225 of 540 Guild-represented employees in news, advertising and administration lost their jobs or accepted buyouts.
The unions with contracts?all members of the umbrella organization of newspaper unions, the Allied Printing Trades Council?chose not to support the boycott, as did city and state AFL-CIO units. The Guild has quit Allied in protest.
Bruce Jett, the Guild unit chairman who Zuckerman refused to hire as ad sales representative, said the boycott already has depressed News circulation by 90,000.
Zuckerman denied the boycott has had any effect. He said January advertising actually increased 11%, and News spokeswoman Sherrie Rollins said circulation dipped in January, but no more than usual.
The Guild's campaign has included leafleting in city transportation hubs, a national mailing to labor groups, and news conferences at which labor and black leaders voiced support for the Guild.
Using professional anti-management campaign organizer Ray Rogers, 12 phones, computers and dozens of volunteers, the union is soliciting support and financing from local black, Hispanic and senior citizens groups. It has picketed U.S. News headquarters in Washington and is "lobbying" Zuckerman's creditors, Jett said, declining to disclose funding sources.
Zuckerman met with local black leaders to explain his position and the paper's "very aggressive" minority hiring program. Had he used union seniority rules in determining job cuts, more minorities would have lost jobs, he said.
"That's an out-and-out lie," said Jett. "He forgot to tell you that the union also gave him the right to hire back anybody out of seniority . . . . He picked and chose who stayed and who he fired. And most of the minorities he laid off had seniority."
Zuckerman responded that the union added conditions to the rehiring proposal, which he called "purely a negotiating tactic." He said that jobs were offered to News employees "purely on a merit-basis review" and without regard to sex, race, age or ethnicity.
Guild-represented workers who lost their jobs involuntarily, the union said, included 41% of the union's minorities, 54% of black males, half the union activists, 37% of those over 50 years old, and 40% Hispanic women.
Campaign literature exploits the themes that minorities and senior staffers were targeted for elimination. One flyer refers to the firings as "Mean Mort's Massacre." Another, a takeoff on the paper's "New York's Hometown Paper" slogan, carries the headline, "New York's Hometown Racist Newspaper," and claims Zuckerman fired two-thirds of the paper's African-American reporters, including all six men.
Of the Guild's 540 white-collar workers, Zuckerman refused to hire 182. Another 45?including marquis names such as mob reporter Jerry Capeci, columnist Juan Gonzalez, veteran reporter Don Singleton, education writer LyNell Hancock, investigative reporter Tom Robbins?signed up for buyouts rather than continue working for Zuckerman. Other News reporters have taken jobs at Newsday, the New York Times and Washington Post.
The cuts reduced newsroom staffing by one-third to 164, but Zuckerman vowed to hire 40 to 50 journalists in the next few months. He said he has received over 500 applications, many from Post staffers.
Zuckerman's foray into the Post newsroom came a week after Hoffenberg said he was buying the Post, and followed continuing revelations about civil judgments against and investigations of Hoffenberg's businesses.
Zuckerman, who from the outset claimed he needed the power to hire and fire journalists in order to revitalize the News, has also hired several staffers from Newsday, including gossip columnist Linda Stasi.
Zuckerman was unrepentant about raiding the competition.
"People are entitled to look for better opportunities," he said, adding that Hoffenberg's reputation and the Post's financial problems posed difficult choices for its employees.
Zuckerman dismissed McAlary's earlier observations of him?a "tyrant" who knows nothing about newspapers?as "all in the heat of battle."
McAlary, in a Jan. 8 column in the Post, also described Zuckerman as a "filthy little dictator" and "Public Enemy No. 1." That was before he jumped ship and joined Zuckerman's Daily News staff this week.
In a parting shot at McAlary, the Post reprinted his Jan. 8 column with the headline: "McAlary was singing a different tune last month."
Zuckerman declined to speculate about the prospects for the Post, except to say he never considered a merger, or to disclose plans for the News.
"There will be a lot of things happening, but I'm not going to talk about it," he said.
Because the Guild, which remains the legal bargaining agent, is without contract, the News has stopped deducting union dues from Guild employees' paychecks.
Guild secretary-treasurer Tom Pennacchio said Post employees have not had a raise in seven years and, with the most recent pay cuts, are earning about 70% of their pay from three years
ago.
Some reporters are making "$600 a week. On average they are making what a reporter is making in Kenosha, Wis. They are sacrificing to keep this place [the Post] going," Pennacchio said.
The Guild has agreed to let the News increase pay 3% for Guild-represented workers, the same hike as agreed to by the other unions.
Pennacchio, downplaying the minority aspect, said people with 30 and 40 years' experience were fired, and the central issue was seniority, the backbone of the union movement.
Though talks were scheduled to resume the first week of February for the first time in two months and the first time since Zuckerman took over the paper last month, Jett was not optimistic.
"Until he feels some hurt, I don't think we'll reach an agreement," Jett said of Zuckerman. "Labor has got to come together and send a message to this guy that he can't do this?or it could happen elsewhere."