The Press: The Battle of Paris

In its home town, the New York Herald Tribune survives only in the name of the city’s new afternoon paper, the World Journal Tribune. Abroad, the Trib is very much alive. Last week the paper sported a new logotype:

But under the logotype, all was familiar, and the Trib’s Jock Whitney was in Paris with his new cochairman, the Post’s Kay Graham, to celebrate the combined operation. Their enthusiasm promised the international edition of the New York Times a fight to the death.

New Momentum. The 79-year-old Trib used to have the field practically to itself. It was a home away from home for expatriate journalists, who turned out consistently lively copy for resident Americans. It kept them well informed about the U.S., but it also managed to cover the rest of the world from a decidedly European viewpoint. And always it was interested in everything Parisian.

In 1960, the Times, which had been printing a small edition in Amsterdam, moved to Paris and started a more ambitious international edition. The Trib, which had been breaking even, soon slipped into the red. But the Times’s losses were still greater, and the two papers opened merger talks. Then the deal fell through, and the competition picked up new momentum.

This fall both papers put in new men at the head of their editorial operations. The Times sent over Foreign News Editor Sydney Gruson, 50, and gave him far more freedom of action than any of his predecessors had enjoyed. The changes show already. No longer is the overseas Times a truncated version of its New York parent. Its makeup reflects a new concern for news from all over Europe; feature stories from home are reprinted to attract tourist and expatriate alike. And Paris, which is, after all, the paper’s home base, is getting much more attention. “We have not covered Paris as it should be covered,” Gruson admits, “but we are starting.” Besides that, he adds, “we are the only newspaper of any language in Europe today to give the complete stock tables.”

The Trib’s new editor is Murray Weiss, onetime managing editor of the paper in New York. With a circulation of 60,000, one-third better than the Times’s 45,000, Weiss plans no radical changes. The Trib will continue to use the graceful, award-winning makeup that was discarded by the New York edition five years ago. It has a strong group of columnists, and it also has the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post news service at its disposal. That often means bylined, front-page stories on major events a day ahead of the Times. Weiss is working hard at improving communications with the U.S. so that he can continue to beat the competition. “My friends say they have a sense of deja vu when they read the Times,” says Weiss.

Window on America. Both papers are aware that only one of them is likely to survive. The Trib is losing $300,000 a year; the Times’s losses are said to be over $1.5 million. “We are prepared to go on losing money for years if necessary,” says Gruson. “But I have just enough ego to think we can overtake the Trib in two years.” Weiss is no less confident. “The Trib is a home-town paper for a hell of a lot of people,” he says. “It’s a window on America for a hell of a lot of others.”