Word: conniff
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Editor Frank Conniff propped his feet on his desk and took command of a city room that had been painfully silent for months. Word was out that the New York newspaper strike was over at last. The pressmen, last of the squabbling unions to make peace, had finally settled; the stereotypers were scheduled to vote approval of their contract at week's end. The long-deferred New York World Journal Tribune was actually getting ready to put out a newspaper, and Conniff's phone rang constantly. Columnist after columnist wanted to ask his new boss for the honor...
...Conniff handled his callers with the good humor, occasional exasperation and unflagging optimism of a man delighted to be back on the job. The new paper, he conceded, would combine most of the features of the three papers it absorbed: the Herald Tribune, the World-Telegram, the Journal-American. "We're not going to emulate any one of them," said Conniff, as he planned for an eight-column layout with abundant white space on weekdays, a six-column page on Sundays. "This paper will look like itself...
...down for good during the city's newspaper strike, Drama Critic Walter Kerr, 53, who had held his post for 15 years, was surely the least worried about the future. While spending the summer lecturing at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, he was besieged with offers. Frank Conniff, editor of the still unpublished World Journal Tribune, even flew over to try to recruit him. But when the critic finally made up his mind last week, his decision was not surprising: Kerr chose the New York Times...
...York Herald Tribune perilously short of staffers. To replace them, Trib editors had to fill the ranks with reporters from the afternoon paper. "It was the greatest draft since the big-league baseball teams were raided for men to make up the Mets," said World Journal Editor Frank Conniff, who sat down with Trib editors to parcel out the players. Hardly recognizing the names of some of the staffers they were acquiring, Trib editors simply had to take their chances...
Very soon, particularly if a strike delays the scheduled publication date, a campaign to publicize the new merged newspapers should get under way. Conniff and his colleagues hope it will be reasonably restrained. "All of us old-timers remember," he says, "how much they promised with PM and how disappointed we were right from the start...