December 8, 1962: The New York Newspaper Strike

December 8, 1962: The New York Typographical Union goes on strike. This means the newspapers of New York City have to stop publication.

This includes the broadsheets: The New York Times, The New York Herald Tribune, The New York Journal American, and the New York World-Telegram & Sun. It also includes the tabloids: The Daily News, the New York Post and the New York Mirror. And it included 2 papers on Long Island, both broadsheets: The Long Island Star Journal and the Long Island Daily Press. Newsday, a Long Island-based tabloid, was not affected.

New York had been a newspaper city for over 100 years. Even the growth of radio hadn't stopped that. Nor had the 1924 merger of the Herald, once the paper of James Gordon Bennett Sr. and Jr., with the Tribune, once the paper of Horace Greeley and the leading voice of the drive to abolish slavery in America prior to the Civil War.

Nor had the merger of the morning American and the afternoon Journal, both owned by William Randolph Hearst's company, in 1937. Nor had the merger of the World, once the paper of Joseph Pulitzer and the publisher of The World Almanac, with the Telegram in 1931, or the 1950 merger of the combined "World-Telly" with The Sun, the paper that declared in an 1897 editorial, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

Nor had radio really hurt the newspaper business. Quite the contrary: Many of the early radio stations were founded by newspapers, and provided a great new source of revenue for them. Indeed, Chicago's best-known radio station, WGN, was founded by The Chicago Tribune, which named the station for the nickname it had chosen for itself: "The World's Greatest Newspaper."

But what radio didn't do, or even try to do, television, however inadvertently, did: It killed the institutions of the afternoon newspaper and the evening newspaper. It was bad enough for papers that there was a 6:00 news broadcast on local TV stations every night. But with the addition of an 11:00 news for when people were going to bed, and the promos throughout prime-time programming of a story they could watch on the news, with the tagline, "Film at 11," the need for an afternoon or an evening paper was gone.

The union knew they had the squeeze on the papers. The papers knew it, too. The strike dragged on through Christmas, New Year's, and the entire Winter. On March 4, 1963, the Post negotiated a separate peace. Finally, Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. brought the sides to the bargaining table. On March 24, the strike was settled.

New York has had newspaper strikes since, but no strike in the history of the American labor movement has hurt an industry more than this one. Several of the papers never recovered. The Mirror published its last edition on October 16, 1963. My grandmother, who grew up in Queens, said it was no great loss: It was a conservative paper of low quality.

The remaining papers did whatever they could to survive, from cutting costs by laying off famous columnists to appealing to the rising Baby Boom generation. The Journal American, in particular, had gambled on gaining younger readers with heavy coverage of The Beatles' visits in 1964 and 1965, something you wouldn't expect a conservative broadsheet to do.

They even hired the famed "pop psychologist," Dr. Joyce Brothers, to analyze the Beatles from a distance. And they had the top entertainment columnist in New York, Dorothy Kilgallen, "The Voice of Broadway" and one of the panelists on CBS' What's My Line?, write about rock and roll for the first time.

But they lost their biggest asset on November 8, 1965, when Kilgallen died. The next year, a long-running power struggle between Hearst company CEO Richard Berlin and the Hearst family did the paper in. The paper's last edition was published on April 24, 1966.

The E.W. Scripps Company gave up on the World-Telegram & Sun the day before, April 23, 1966. The Daily News bought the rights to The World Almanac, and its parent company still publishes it today, although it's really a waste of money to publish a 1,000-page almanac, given how easy it is to look things up on the Internet.

The Herald Tribune, long the beacon of America's "liberal Republicans," with one of the finest sports sections in the country, hung on a little longer, until August 15, 1966. It was the most direct competitor to The New York Times, a.k.a. "The Paper of Record," which eulogized:

The death of The New York Herald Tribune stills a voice that for a century and a quarter exerted a powerful influence in the affairs of nation, state and city. It was a competitor of ours, but a competitor that sought survival on the basis of quality, originality and integrity, rather than sensationalism or doctrinaire partisanship.

For a while, the 3 papers that failed that year tried to band together: The World Journal Tribune began publishing on September 12, 1966. But instead of combining the best aspects of all 3 papers, it seemed to combine the worst ones, and the money problems of all 3. The WJT, or "Widget," never caught on, and Scripps (W-T&S) and Hearst (J-A) pulled the plug on May 5, 1967.

And so, New York City, which had 10 daily newspapers as recently as 1924, and 7 as recently as the Summer of 1963, was down to 3: The Times, the Daily News and the Post. The Daily News and the Post have each survived 2 existential crises since then, as well as their ideological flip-flop of 1976: Rupert Murdoch bought the Post, turning it from a paper for liberal intellectuals, especially Jewish ones, to a populist conservative paper, as the Daily News had been; and the News then became a liberal paper, though still taking conservative positions on crime in New York (helping Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani get elected Mayor), the Israeli-Arab conflict, and Cuba.

One more note: A survey showed that 1963 was the first year in which a majority of Americans said that they got more of their news from TV than from newspapers. The New York newspaper strike of December 8, 1962 until March 31, 1963 may have had something to do with that.

*

December 8, 1962 was a Saturday. Baseball was out of season. The college football regular season had ended the day before. But each of the 2 pro football leagues of the time played 1 game. In the NFL, the Baltimore Colts beat the Washington Redskins, 34-21 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. And in the American Football League, the New York Titans, forerunners of the Jets, lost to the Buffalo Bills, 20-3 at the Polo Grounds.

There were 4 games in the NBA that day:

* The New York Knicks beat the Detroit Pistons, 87-78 at the old Madison Square Garden.

* The Syracuse Nationals beat the Boston Celtics, 102-97 at the Onondaga War Memorial Arena in Syracuse. This was the last season for the Nats, who moved the next season, becoming the Philadelphia 76ers. Their arena still stands, as the Upstate Medical University Arena.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Cincinnati Royals, 131-128 at the Cincinnati Gardens. For the Lakers, Elgin Baylor scored 33, and Jerry West and Rudy LaRusso each scored 28. Oscar Robertson of the Royals led all scorers on the day with 42, but it wasn't enough.

* And the St. Louis Hawks beat the San Francisco Warriors, 145-129 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. Wilt Chamberlain scored 39 for the Warriors, but the Hawks got 26 from Bob Pettit, 24 from Cliff Hagan, and 21 from John Barnhill.

There were 3 games played in the NHL, as all of the "Original Six" teams were in action:

* The New York Rangers played the Boston Bruins to a tie, 3-3 at the Boston Garden.

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Detroit Red Wings, 2-1 at the Montreal Forum.

* And the Chicago Black Hawks played the Toronto Maple Leafs to a tie, 1-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. 

November 20, 1976: Rupert Murdoch Buys the New York Post

Murdoch's head on a mockup of the poster

for the 1976 remake of King Kong,

with a headline appropriate for his style of newspaper

November 20, 1976: New York newspapering changes forever. Rupert Murdoch, a brash right-wing Australian who had already changed British media with national newspaper The Sun, buys the New York Post. He turns it from what it was, a hard-hitting paper favored by liberal intellectuals, especially Jewish ones, into a conservative rag that cares a lot for flashy headlines and not a damn for journalistic accuracy and ethics.

Murdoch uses the Post to slam the City's liberals, the State's liberals, and the country's liberals, for allowing crime to go unchecked, for allowing government spending to go unchecked. You know, the usual right-wing bullshit.

The City's other major tabloid that survived the big newspaper closings of the 1960s was the Daily News. (The words "New York" have never been in the official title, but their masthead has called them "New York's Picture Newspaper" and "New York's Hometown Paper.") It had previously been a populist conservative paper, due to its roots as having been a part of the Chicago Tribune Company. But with the Post taking a rightward turn, the News realized it needed to shift and fill the Post's former void, and they became a left-populist paper -- not Communist, or even socialist, but definitely liberal. 

Murdoch's sensationalism, which he had perfected in his native country and then in Britain, was brought to the Post, including the infamous, and sometimes even correct, Page Six gossip page. The paper's huge, salacious headlines brought its circulation to unheard-of levels. The Daily News was forced to fight fire with fire. The Son of Sam, a serial killer who had already struck twice, would continue to kill, and this drove both papers' circulation to higher points than they'd had in years. On April 15, 1983, the Post outdid itself with its most famous headline.

In 1993, Murdoch folded the Post into his larger News Corp., which would include Fox News Channel. In the 21st Century, the Post finally exceeded the Daily News in circulation -- partly due to the News' ideological steps away from liberal populism, often pandering to the George W. Bush Administration, and its publisher Mortimer Zuckerman's longstanding friendship with another broadcast tycoon, Michael Bloomberg, whom Zuckerman's support, and Murdoch's, helped make Bloomberg Mayor for 3 terms, resulting in a serious decline for the City. By the time he left office at the end of 2013, Bloomberg was one of the most unpopular Mayors in City history.

The Post's circulation has not, however, exceeded that of The New York Times.

*

November 20, 1976 was a Saturday. Olympic Gold Medal-winning gymnast Dominique Dawes was born. This was also the day the 1st Rocky film premiered, and baseball pitcher Wayne Garland received a contract he couldn't live up to. I have separate entries for those events.

Baseball was out of season. There were college football games played that day, including some major rivalries:

* Rivalry: Number 3 University of Southern California beat Number 2 University of California at Los Angeles. USC beat UCLA, 24-14 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and clinched the Pacific-Eight Conference title.

* Rivalry: Number 4 Michigan beat Number 8 Ohio State, 22-0 at Ohio Stadium in Columbus, clinching the Big Ten Conference title. Michigan lost the Rose Bowl to USC. Ohio State settled for the Orange Bowl.

* Rivalry: Number 6 Maryland beat Virginia, 28-0 at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, Virginia, clinching the Atlantic Coast Conference title.

* Rivalry: Number 7 Oklahoma and Number 10 Nebraska had the week off, preparing for each other. Oklahoma won, 20-17 at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska. But this was a rare year in this era in which neither of them won the Big Eight Conference Championship.

* Number 9 Houston upset Number 5 Texas Tech, 27-19 at Jones Stadium in Lubbock, clinching the Southwest Conference title. Houston beat Maryland in the Cotton Bowl.

* Number 13 Notre Dame beat the University of Miami, 40-27 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana.

* Number 15 Colorado beat Kansas State, 35-28 at KSU Stadium (now Bill Snyder Family Stadium) in Manhattan, Kansas, clinching the Big Eight title. Colorado lost the Orange Bowl to Ohio State.

* Number 16 Oklahoma State beat Number 14 Iowa State, 42-21 at Lewis Field (now T. Boone Pickens Stadium) in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

* Rivalry: Number 19 Missouri were upset by Kansas, 41-14 at Faurot Field in Columbia, Missouri.

* The University of Pittsburgh, ranked Number 1, had the week off. The following Friday night, they beat Penn State, and then won the National Championship by beating Southeastern Conference Champion Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.

* Rivalry: Villanova beat Temple, 24-7 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia.

* Rivalry: Kentucky beat Tennessee, 7-0 at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee.

* Rivalry: North Carolina beat Duke in a wild one, 39-38 at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

* Rivalry: Clemson beat South Carolina, 28-9 at Memorial Stadium in Clemson, South Carolina.

* Rivalry: Mississippi State beat Mississippi (Ole Miss), 28-11 at Memorial Stadium in Jackson, Mississippi.

* Rivalry: Louisiana State (LSU) beat Tulane, 17-7 at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

* Rivalry: Indiana beat Purdue, 20-14 at Ross-Ade Stadium in West Lafayette, Indiana.

* Rivalry: Illinois beat Northwestern, 48-6 at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois.

* Rivalry: Wisconsin beat Minnesota, 26-17 at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin.

* Rivalry: Brigham Young beat Utah, 34-12 at Rice Stadium (now Rice-Eccles Stadium) in Salt Lake City.

* Rivalry: Stanford beat the University of California, 27-24 at California Memorial Stadium in Berkeley.

* Rivalry: Oregon beat Oregon State, 23-14 at Parker Stadium (now Reser Stadium) in Corvallis, Oregon.

* Rivalry: Washington beat Washington State, 51-32 at Martin Stadium in Pullman, Washington.

* Air Force beat Wyoming, 41-21 at Falcon Stadium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Army and Navy both had the week off, preparing for each other the following Saturday, at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. Navy won, 38-10.

In New Jersey, Princeton had already finished their season, at 2-7. Rutgers were off. Five days later, on Thanksgiving Day, beat Colgate at Giants Stadium, 17-9, to clinch an undefeated regular season, 11-0. But they were not invited to a bowl game.

There were 6 games played in the NBA that day:

* The New York Knicks beat the Denver Nuggets, 120-115 at Madison Square Garden. David Thompson scored 35 points in defeat.

* The Washington Bullets beat the San Antonio Spurs, 109-103 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Atlanta Hawks, 123-106 at The Omni in Atlanta.

* The Detroit Pistons beat the Boston Celtics, 116-110 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit. Bob Lanier scored 40 points.

* The Houston Rockets beat the Kansas City Kings, 127-126 in overtime at The Summit in Houston. (The arena has since been converted into the Central Campus of the Lakewood Church, Dr. Joel Osteen's "megachurch.")

* The Golden State Warriors beat the Buffalo Braves, 130-93 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.

There were 4 games played in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers lost to the St. Louis Blues, 3-1 at the St. Louis Arena.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Minnesota North Stars, 8-3 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. Darryl Sittler, Jack Valiquette, and Dave "Tiger" Williams each had 2 goals for the Leafs.

* The Colorado Rockies beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 5-2 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.

* And the Buffalo Sabres beat the Los Angeles Kings, 4-3 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.

And there were 3 games in the World Hockey Association:

* The New England Whalers and the Minnesota Fighting Saints played to a tie, 3-3 at the Hartford Civic Center (now the PeoplesBank Arena).

* The Indianapolis Racers beat the Winnipeg Jets, 8-4 at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

* And the Houston Aeros beat the Phoenix Roadrunners, 5-2 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.

And in English soccer, Arsenal and Liverpool played to a 1-1 draw at the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury, in North London.

August 25, 1934: Dorothy Thompson Is Exepelled by Nazi Germany

August 25, 1934: Dorothy Thompson, then America's leading female journalist, is expelled from Nazi Germany. Her crime was writing unkindly of the country's head of government, Chancellor Adolf Hitler.

Dorothy Celine Thompson was born on July 9, 1893 in the Buffalo suburb of Lancaster, New York. Her mother died when she was 7, and she didn't get along with her father's 2nd wife, so at age 15, she was sent to Chicago to live with his sisters. She graduated from the journalism program at Syracuse University, still one of the best in the country. After working for women's right to vote, she went to Europe to further her journalism career.

She covered the Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Irish Civil War. In 1925, she was promoted to Chief of the Central European Service for the Public Ledger, and in 1927 became head of the Berlin bureau of the New York Post. According to her biographer, Peter Kurth, Thompson was "the undisputed queen of the overseas press corps, the first woman to head a foreign news bureau of any importance."

From 1923 to 1927, she was married to expatriate Hungarian writer Joseph Bard. In 1928, she married another journalist, and the man who was then America's foremost novelist, Sinclair Lewis. In 1930, she gave birth to a son, Michael. The Lewises divorced in 1942.

In 1931, Thompson secured a rare audience with Adolf Hitler, the leader of Germany's rapidly ascending Nazi {arty, at the Kaiserhof Hotel in Berlin. For one of her three permitted questions, Thompson asked Hitler a direct challenge: "When you come to power, will you abolish the constitution of the German Republic?"

Hitler's response was shockingly direct: "I will get into power legally. I will abolish this parliament and the Weimar constitution afterward. I will found an authority-state, from the lowest cell to the highest instance; everywhere there will be responsibility and authority above, discipline and obedience below."

Thompson believed he was telling the truth about his dictatorial ambitions, yet she couldn't fathom that he would be successful. The very idea struck her as absurd: "Imagine a would-be dictator setting out to persuade a sovereign people to vote away their rights."

She later said, "When I walked into Adolf Hitler's salon in the Kaiserhof Hotel, I was convinced that I was meeting the future dictator of Germany. In something like fifty seconds, I was quite sure that I was not. It took just about that time to measure the startling insignificance of this man who has set the world agog."

She recognized that Hitler was a masterful propagandist and orator in front of a crowd but she wasn't prepared for how pathetic he appeared one on one. "He is inconsequent and voluble, ill-poised, insecure. He is the very prototype of the Little Man," she wrote after their meeting.

Within a year, Thompson learned the devastating lesson of how easily democratic citizens could be persuaded to relinquish their rights to a would-be dictator who channeled their anxieties into hatred of a demonized 'other' while promising national greatness. After his election in 1933, Hitler began to crush his political opponents, rapidly militarize German society, and persecute targeted groups.

Hitler was sufficiently threatened by her work that he reportedly demanded the creation of a "Dorothy Thompson Emergency Squad" to rush translations of her articles to him. On August 25, 1934, the Nazi government expelled her from the country, making her the 1st American journalist banned from Nazi Germany.

She turned her expulsion into a rallying cry, writing in The New York Times, "My offense was to think that Hitler is just an ordinary man... That is a crime against the reigning cult in Germany, which says Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God to save the German people... To question this mystic mission is so heinous that, if you are a German, you can be sent to jail. I, fortunately, am an American, so I merely was sent to Paris."

Returning to America, Thompson embarked on what became a phenomenon in itself -- a one-woman crusade determined to awaken America and the Western world to the real and present menace of the rise of far-right Fascism, and the terrible war that might be needed to stop its spread throughout the entire West. Thompson was one of the most widely read and heard journalists in America at the time, reaching millions through her influential "On the Record" column and nightly NBC radio broadcasts. In her broadcasts and columns, she often championed Jewish refugees, and consistently emphasized Hitler's attack on Jewish people as central to understanding the Nazi threat.

In 1939, she made headlines for attending the rally of the German American Bund, an organization of American Nazis, at Madison Square Garden in New York, where she was seated in the press box, and began to laugh loudly and disruptively during speeches. After being escorted out by police, she returned to her seat where she was surrounded by a dozen Bund stormtroopers, then proceeded to cause a second scene by shouting "Bunk!" (meaning "lies") at the stage.

"I was amazed to see a duplicate of what I saw seven years ago in Germany," she told a reporter after leaving the event. "Tonight, I listened to words taken out of the mouth of Adolf Hitler." It was precisely those words' utterance at home that alarmed her most. She had spent a good part of her career watching how fascism could, improbable as it might first have seemed, sweep over a nation.

"Her point was this can happen anywhere," University of London professor Sarah Churchwell, who has studied Thompson's work, explained. "You have to strengthen your democratic guardrails. You have to ensure that you don't let this happen to you because complacency is the enemy. And that is what she wrote about over and over and over again, banging the drum. Warning people, take this seriously. This isn't a joke. And nobody is immune to it."

But she wasn't as enlightened as this made her sound: Although she was initially complimentary toward Jews, she became disillusioned over the tactics that led to the creation of the State of Israel, and became considerably less kind to them. Her surviving writings about black people were also rough by today's standards.

She lived long enough to see the triumph of freedom in 1945. In 1943, she married for the 3rd time, to expatriate Austrian painter Maxim Kopf. The marriage lasted until his death in 1958. Sinclair Lewis died in 1951. Dorothy Thompson continued to report, including from Europe, and was in Lisbon, Portugal when she died on January 30, 1961, at the age of 67. Michael Lewis, son of Dorothy and Sinclair, became a stage actor, but was killed in a plane crash in 1975, only 44 years old.

Dorothy Thompson once wrote:

No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument for expressing the Incorporated National Will. When Americans think of dictators they always think of some foreign model. If anyone turned up here in a fur hat, boots and a grim look he would be recognized and shunned...

But when our dictator turns up, you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American... through whose leadership alone democracy can be realized. And nobody will ever say "Heil" to him, or "Ave Caesar," nor will they call him "Führer" or "Duce." But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of "O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!"

In 2016, Donald Trump proved her right.

UPDATE: But in 2024, in making his comeback, Trump dropped hints that he would be a dictator, and lost no votes because of it, thus proving her wrong.

*

August 25, 1934 was a Saturday. This was the opening day of the English soccer season, and defending Champions Arsenal traveled from North London to Hampshire on the South Coast, but could only manage a 3-3 draw against Portsmouth at Fratton Park. Arsenal would go on to win their 3rd straight Football League Division One title, anyway.

And these baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees split a doubleheader with the Cleveland Indians at Yankee Stadium. The Indians won the opener, 5-3. Monte Pearson, later to pitch for the Yankees, outpitched Johnny Murphy, usually a reliever. Earl Averill hit 2 home runs, and Bill Knickerbocker added 1 for the Tribe. Babe Ruth went 0-for-4, but had an RBI on a bases-loaded walk, then sat out the nightcap.

The Yankees won that game, 9-3. Johnny Broaca went the distance for the win. Tony Lazzeri and Frank Crosetti hit home runs. Over the 2 games, Lou Gehrig went 3-for-7 with a walk and 4 RBIs.

* The New York Giants beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-6 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. In a rare bad moment for him that season, Dizzy Dean came in to pitch in relief, but blew the save and was the losing pitcher, falling to 22-6 (he finished 30-7), while Hal Schumacher won in relief, advancing to 19-5 (he finished 23-10). Giant player-manager Bill Terry went 1-for-4. Mel Ott went 1-for-3 with 2 walks and an RBI.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the Chicago Cubs, 4-3 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Johnny Babich took a 4-hit shutout into the bottom of the 9th, but ran out of gas, allowing 3 singles and a double. The winning run scored when Stan Hack grounded back to reliever pitcher Tom Zachary, who made a bad throw to 3rd base, allowing Billy Jurges to score.

* The Chicago White Sox swept a doubleheader from the Boston Red Sox, 3-2 and 8-7 at Fenway Park in Boston. Both games went to 11 innings. In the 1st game, Gordon Rhodes walked Marty Hopkins with the bases loaded, forcing Luke Appling home with the winning run. In the 2nd game, Jimmy Dykes singled Appling home with the winning run. Lefty Grove started the game, but lasted only 2 innings. Jimmie Foxx did not play in the doubleheader.

* A doubleheader was split at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The St. Louis Browns won the 1st game, 5-4. The Philadelphia Athletics won the 2nd game, 3-2.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Washington Senators, 4-2 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Hank Greenberg went 2-for-4 with a home run and 2 RBIs. Lynwood "Schoolboy" Rowe won his 20th game against 4 losses. He finished 24-8 as the Tigers won the American League Pennant.

* A doubleheader was split at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Pirates won the 1st game, 4-1. The Philadelphia Phillies won the 2nd game, 12-8. Over the 2 games, Arky Vaughan went 4-for-9 with an RBI, Paul Waner went 4-for-9 with a solo home run and a walk, and Lloyd Waner went 2-for-9 with a walk and an RBI.

* And the Boston Braves beat the Cincinnati Reds, 9-6 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Wally Berger (2 runs) and Hal Lee (1 run) singled home the go-ahead runs in the top of the 13th inning.

August 10, 1978: The 1978 New York Newspaper Strike

August 10, 1978: A newspaper strike shuts down New York City's 3 major newspapers until November 5. It was a multi-union strike: Not just the reporters, but the paperhandlers, machinists keeping the presses literally rolling, and the mechanics and drivers for the delivery trucks. Over 10,000 employees were out.

Wages were not the main issue. When the strike was settled, the union won some concessions in benefits, while management eliminated some overtime. Both sides could legitimately claim victory.

The fact that there were fewer reporters to bother them, and to complain to (although there were still TV and radio guys), is often credited as being one of the reasons the New York Yankees made their epic comeback and won the World Series.

Unlike with the 1962-63 strike that immediately killed the New York Mirror (a tabloid), and led by 1966 to the deaths of the Herald Tribune, the Journal-American, and the World-Telegram & Sun (all broadsheets), all 3 major New York dailies survived the strike. The broadsheet Times was as strong as ever. The tabloids, the Daily News and the Post, would each have their problems over the next few years, and each almost went out of business at least once, but have survived.

I've often said that the Times is the face that New York City prefers to show to the rest of the world, the Daily News is the face the City prefers to show to itself, and the Post is a face that only a mother could love.

*

August 10, 1978 was a Thursday. These Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 9-0 at Yankee Stadium. Ron Guidry pitched a 3-hit shutout, with only a double by Robin Yount, and singles by Yount and Dick Davis. He advanced to 16-2 on the season. He would finish 25-3 -- 27-3 counting the postseason. Reggie Jackson did not play. Chris Chambliss went 3-for-4 with a walk and 4 RBIs.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 6-5 at Fenway Park in Boston. Andre Thornton had singled home the go-ahead run in the top of the 13th inning. But then, just after he giveth, Thornton taketh away: His error on a Butch Hobson grounder to start the bottom of the 13th led to another error on the same play, allowing Hobson to come all the way around to score. George Scott doubled, Gary Hancock pinch-ran for him, and Rick Burleson singled Hancock home.

On July 20, the Red Sox had led the Yankees by 14 games. After this game, their lead was 7 1/2. The Yankees would tie them on September 10, and they would finish in a tie for the American League Eastern Division title. The Yankees would win a Playoff, then the Pennant, and finally the World Series.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 3-1 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Mike Schmidt went 1-for-3 with an RBI. The Pirates' only run came on a home run by Dave Parker. Willie Stargell went 1-for-4.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Kansas City Royals, 3-2 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Ken Singleton hit a home run, and Eddie Murray went 1-for-4.

* The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Chicago White Sox, 7-3 at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Cincinnati Reds, 15-3 at San Diego Stadium (later renamed Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium). Gene Tenace went 3-for-5 with a home run and 5 RBIs. Dave Winfield went 1-for-3 with 2 walks. Pete Rose went 2-for-4. Johnny Bench only appeared as a pinch-hitter, and did not reach base.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat their arch-rivals, the San Francisco Giants, 12-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

* And the California Angels beat the Oakland Athletics, 16-5 at the Oakland Coliseum. Lyman Bostock went 3-for-4 with a walk and 5 RBIs. Having finished 2nd in the American League batting race to this then-teammate, Rod Carew of the Minnesota Twins, he was looking like a superstar in the making. Just 45 days later, he was dead.