n030  1050  01 May 83
BC-PUBLISHERS
By JONATHAN FRIENDLY
c. 1983 N.Y. Times News Service
    NEW YORK - The publishers of the nation's 1,710 daily newspapers,
meeting last week in New York City, were told that they should be
delivering a free weekly paper to every home in their city because
such ''shoppers'' are wonderful vehicles for advertising.
    That piece of commercial advice was not exceptional in itself, but
the source of the counsel was - the president of the printers union.
In fact, the very idea of having a union leader address the annual
convention of the American Newspaper Publishers Association was an
innovation.
    The union leader, Joe Bingel, president of the International
Typographical Union, said his advice was offered in enlightened
self-interest.
    He said labor was ready to cooperate on the crucial questions of
money and manpower for new ventures because they would mean more jobs
and more job security. Union members have watched with dismay as
major newspapers have folded in city after city.
    Bingel and a second union speaker, Charles A. Perlik Jr., the
president of the Newspaper Guild, won the close attention of the
publishers, who are trying to figure out what the proposed merger of
those two unions might mean for contract bargaining in the future.
    The pressmen and the graphic arts unions are also discussing merger,
raising the prospect of having two unions represent 70 percent of
newspapers' unionized work forces.
    Under the guild's top contract, experienced reporters, editors and
photographers are assured nearly $40,000 a year, and Perlik said his
next goal was $50,000. ''Which of you wants to be first?'' he asked.
He got laughter but no volunteers.
    
    Publishers and the industries that supply the newspaper business
normally do not stint on entertaining each other at receptions and
private parties -uring the annual convention.
    This year the Times Mirror Co., for example, hired a fleet of
limousines to take its guests from convention headquarters, the
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, to a dinner at the River Cafe on the Brooklyn
side of the East River.
    The newsprint companies, among the biggest spenders in the past,
were more subdued this year. Boise-Cascade had a reception at the
''21'' Club, but Abitibi-Price and Bowater did not play host to all
2,888 conventioneers as they had before.
    Industry officials explained that newsprint sales were off almost 10
percent last year and that the earnings of the paper companies had
fallen by amounts ranging from 25 to 95 percent.
    Some of the publishers felt the pinch of paying for their own meals
at the functions in the hotel. D. Ray Wilson, the publisher of The
Daily Courier-News in Elgin, Ill., shook his head in amazement Monday
morning. ''I don't care what it is,'' he told his wife, ''no
breakfast is worth $24 a plate.''
    
    The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs has posed a tricky
philosophic problem for the city's newspapers, by writing to ask
their help in cracking down on merchants operating without required
licenses and on companies that do not respond to consumer complaints.
    So far the department has not gotten any direct response from the
newspapers, according to Anne Carson, its consumer advocate.
    Advertising department officials at the major newspapers, The Daily
News, The New York Times and The New York Post, all said they already
tried to block ads from unscrupulous merchants and had done so for
many years. They also said they tried to cooperate with the city. But
they said they were philosophically leery of formalizing the
arrangment.
    ''We don't want readers to get ripped off,'' said Patrick Purcell,
The Post's advertising director, ''but I don't know that we are in a
position to act as a policing body for the Department of Consumer
Affairs.''
    Robert Smith, the head of The Times's advertising acceptability
department, said that his office cooperated with the city and with
groups like the Better Business Bureau, but that ''we're not an
agency of the city.''
    
    Measuring a newspaper's success used to be a simple matter of
counting the number of copies it sold and multiplying by the sales
price. But advertising dollars have become increasingly important -
they account for about 80 percent of a typical newspaper's income -
and advertisers now insist on specifics, such as how many copies are
going to which areas or neighborhoods.
    That pressure, in turn, is being felt at the Audit Bureau of
Circulations of Schomburg, Ill., which performs the basic task of
verifying the sales claims newspapers make.
    Newspapers in competitive markets, Trenton and Dallas among them,
have questioned A.B.C counts. Newspapers, including The New York
Times and The Wall Street Journal, that sell many copies at bulk
rates for distribution in hotels and elsewhere want the audits to
credit those sales more completely. Some advertisers want the bureau
to list sales by zip codes, more accurately saying who the readers
are.
    A.B.C. representatives have agreed to sit down with a committee of
owner and advertising representatives to discuss some of the problems.
    The head of the committee, John B. Lake, who is publisher of The St.
Petersburg (Fla.) Times and Evening Independent, said, ''We market
differently from 50 years ago, and we have to revisit the rules and
regulations that were written 50 years ago.''
    
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BC-REVIEW-AFGHAN (Undated)
(The Week in Review)
By DREW MIDDLETON
c. 1983 N.Y. Times News Service
    The snow is melting in the high passes through which refugees flee
to Pakistan and arms shipments filter in the starlight to the waiting
insurgents. Around Kabul and provincial towns, Soviet troops gas
their vehicles, load heavy ammunition and prepaummer of the occupation campaign-
 in Afghanistan.
    Last week marked the fifth anniversary of the bloody coup that
overthrew President Mohammad Daud and led to a Soviet puppet regime.
A balance sheet on how well that regime has entrenched itself against
insurgent opposition is difficult but the conclusions of experts in
the West appear to favor the Soviet Union.
    Generally, the military situation, in the view of experienced
intelligence analysts, does not compare with that of United States
forces in Vietnam. The insurgents still lack unity of command and
training. Generations of tribal and personal enmities remain strong.
After one recent operation in which two insurgent groups combined,
the Afghan guerrillas fired on each other as freely as on the
Russians, according to a Western source.
    Soviet reports on the campaign to eliminate Afghan resistance are
fragmentary and weighted with propaganda. Insurgent claims of Russian
losses often appear grossly exaggerated. Sifting claim and
counter-claim, intelligence analysts in Washington say that Soviet
casualties for the entire operation probably are 5,000 dead and
10,000 wounded. Moreover, although 200,000 Afghan rebels are under
arms, these sources doubt whether more than 10,000 are engaged
against the occupying forces at any one time.
    The Soviet army and air force seem to have established control of
the major cities and towns and the communications network. They have
also built a number of major airfields capable of taking the most
advanced jets in the country, MiG-25s and Su-24s.
    The methodical tightening of the Russian grip on the country has
been hampered but...
(End missing.)
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