Page:Columbia Journalism Review volume 2 issue 3 (fall 1963).djvu/39

 seven of the striking newsmen and stepping up their news coverage accordingly.

The then recently settled New York newspaper strike was virtually ignored in later phases, although management alluded to it in the initial stages of the dispute, attempting to use the length and cost of the New York strike as a propaganda weapon. Advertiser publisher Thurston Twigg-Smith said that the management package offered was "far better than New York newspapermen settled for after more than one hundred days of striking." Just before the strike the Hawaii newspapers also played up vacationing New York Mayor Robert Wagner's statements at a Honolulu press luncheon describing the bad effects of the strike in his city. But in the end, as an Advertiser editorial in the first post-strike issue noted, "the recent New York strike—as far as subsequent negotiations in Honolulu were concerned—might as well have occured on the moon."

During and after the strike, organized labor made much of the concerted action among the seven newspaper unions. The AFL-CIO News referred to "an unprecedented demonstration of unity and joint bargaining;" the Guild Reporter called it a "new chapter in newspaper union unity." But for all that, traditional inter-union rivalry was present. The typographers' strike authorization came some time after four of the other unions involved had voted to walk out, and had worked without contracts. As in New York, the typographers at first rejected the back-to-work agreement, a rejection that angered many of the other strikers. Only after a second and secret ballot did the ITU local reverse itself.

Strike "battle page" appeared in Pali Press of Oahu

One of the most hotly disputed questions during the strike was the role of Jack Hall. Head of the ILWU, Hall is a vigorous leader eager to expand his union into white-collar offices. Supposedly he had been called in originally by the unions as an expert on pension plans. But when the strike began he represented the ninety circulation department workers belonging to his union. Later Hall was appointed one of the three-man labor negotiating team. A month after the strike began Time magazine (July 19) called it a contest of wills between Chinn Ho (former Advertiser director and stockholder who now owns stock in and is president of the Star-Bulletin as well as president of the Hilo Tribune-Herald) and Jack Hall. Other strike leaders and many rank-and-filers denied this and contended that "Hall was only one of the union negotiators." But Hall clearly was more than this, although his exact role remains ambiguous. One indication is the fact that prior to the reopening of the contract talks that led to a settlement Hall and Ho met for an extended talk. Probably The New York Times summed it up best when it said that Hall played "a key role."

Unlike other recent newspaper strikes the Hawaii one aroused little interest, and coverage of it on the mainland can be described at best as indifferent. In this instance, the nation's press virtually ignored what amounted to a statewide stoppage in publication.

DANIEL J. LEAB

Hazel Brannon Smith of Lexington, Mississippi, has established an unparalleled record of perseverance and tenacity. As publisher and editor of the weekly Lexington Advertiser and Durant News, both in Holmes County, Mississippi, she has been battling what she sees as injustices close at hand for more than twenty years. In return, she and her papers have felt the hostility of official and unofficial powers of the community. For nine years, she has had to fight advertising boycotts and personal vilification; time and again, she has had to raise money at the eleventh hour to keep publishing.

Mrs. Smith, an alumna of the University of Alabama school of journalism, first came to Holmes County, in a part of Mississippi devoted primarily to farming, in 1936, when she bought the Durant paper. Seven years later she acquired the century-old Advertiser in the larger county seat town of Lexington. Together, her papers had a circulation of a little more than 4,000.

Early in her career, Mrs. Smith (then Miss Brannon) campaigned successfully against gambling and liquor racketeering. After the war, she turned her attention to what had become a growing concern— Rh