l in places like Bangkok and Manila, and the lack of same in
Asia Hands With the Pope ln Warsaw
journalists
Memorable Sendoff
places like Warsaw and Bonn, Hoefle looked up glumly from his
Dear Sir,
Dear Sir,
Piwo and said "something's wrong
ln
case anyone was wondering
h
eret'.
what happens to old Asia correspondents, it turns out theY just go on to cover other stories. Among the thousand or so journalists
Barry Kalb West Berlin
have a vague recollection of pulling myself away from a heated debate
following Pope John Paul ll around
in early June were Leon Daniel of UPI (formerlY Hong Kong, now London), CBS News Cameramen Kurt Hoefle (formerlY Bangkok, now Bonn) and Mike Marriot (formerly lndochina, now Poland
London), NBC Correspondent Don
Oliver (formerly TokYo and lndo-
china, now Los Angeles), David Andelman of the New York Times (formerly Bangkok, now Belgrade),
Loren Jenkins of
Newsweek
(formerly Hong Kong and lndochina, now Rome), and Yours trulY, now covering Eastern EuroPe oÙt of West Berlin for Time. The weather did get a bit troPical
Both Deloris and I would like express our sincerest thanks to the Club and its members for a most memorable send-off on the evening of May 4. Since it happened to coincide with the UK General Election, I
to
Parrott with Two T's
on the merits - or otherwise - of the Thatcher victory and taking a last lingering look at the deadly
Dear Si6
oval bar at about 4 a.m.
for sending me a "l do hope the FCC in TokYo menu card for the FCC's 30th closes a little earlier," muttered anniversary dinner - very interest- Deloris ås we staggered aboard ing and original. I am sorry I was PA 002 the following morning not able to be present at what I nursing seven su itcases, two am sure was a very en joyable kids and the most nonumental occasion. No doubt a full account h angoverers. of the gathering will appear in the lan Verchere next issue of The Correspondent D irector and I will be interested to know Corporate Commu n icati ions-Asia how many attended and if anyl Bank of America many of the old hands were inMany thanks
My 'own associations with - uP to 34 degrees cluded. club actually go back further, the and the that but when it was located ín two of the presence of a couple of Xinhua men were the only similarities to top floors in Broadway Mansions, Shanghai, during the Civil War, and covering a story in Asia. prior to the necessity to retreat Warsaw has one alleged Chinese restaurant, called the Shanghaj sou th.
during the trip
Tokyo
Celsius one day
(pronounced Shanghai), which has a couple of alleged Chinese dishes on its menu, served with clotted rice (Prague actuallY has a PrettY good Chinese restaurant, which was
run until fairly recentlY bY
a
Chinese chef).
l, and CBS Cameraman Kurt Volkert did the town in Hoefle,
Warsaw one evening, but aside from the strip show at the Sovietdonated Palace of Kultur and the beautiful Bulgarian magician's assistant in the Victoria Hotel night
club show, there wasn't much to
Anyway, good luck with the club and may it continue to prosper. I still have hopes of another trip abroad and I plan that mY itinerary will take me through Hong Kong in which case I shall be calling at Sutherland House.
And, by the waY and in the
interests of journalistic accuracy, of course, may I have a mild crack at the compiler of that menu. lf the
Mouse in Chocolate Mousse can have two s's could the parrot in Monty Parrott please have those two t's! For the record the list of
past presidents in the see. There wasn't much to do either, except drink Polish Piwo (beer) Membership List (my copy 1975) and vodka at several US dollars has the spelling error. All good wishes to any members a throw. The thought of the Darlingski Massage and Machine who may still recall me (there's a Tool People's CooPerative didn't bloke called Hughes, for instance). MontY Parrott do much for us. Thinking of the d istractions that await hard-working 16
printed
New Zealand
Concerned Canadian
by William Rees-Mogg, Editor, The
a
It
is very hard for the staff of
newspaper
not to be able to
for six months. This does not only apply to the editorial publish
staff, but to
all the people involved
in the newspaper's production.
I
felt this particularly strongly a few days ago when I met on the NGA's picket line a printer whom I had worked with on the stone when I was city editor of rhe Sundoy Times in the early 1960s. I know
Dear Sir,
what a good printer he is. Although we were on opposite sides in the dispute we could both understand
Broadcasting Corporation, Mr Col in
each other's sense
I am writing this on behalf of my former boss of the Canadian Hoath, who
is now an absentee
member of the FCC, to inquire if it is possible to place an announcement in the FCC newsletter Conadian journalist trovelling through Asia with wife ond two-
yeor-old son on researchf vocotion ti¡p in September 1979 would like to contoct fomilY Ìn Hong Kong willing to occommodote them os paying house guests for 1 -2 weeks. Please write Dovid llishort, Editorial Dept,, The Province, 2250 Gronville Street, Vancouver, B,C, Cqnadq.
Thanking you for your help. Florence Bow. Hong Kong.
of
loss
and concern for the future of the paper.
I
have tried therefore
to think
how one could explain to the members of the NGA, the union
Times
which exists in some chapels of some of the other Fleet Street unions. Yet it is the NGA claim which is the centre of the problem.
The problem for the NGA is that they have a monopoly of an old technology and are trying to
turn it into a
monopoly
of
a
new one. The NGA still lays clairn
to a total monopoly of
the
for the new technology. They want to
terminals which are used
impose the same degree of control
that they have of mechanical printing on electronic printing, though that would be a fatal limitation to the possibilities of the new
system. They want to exclude journalists and commercial staff from access to the computer bY access to the terminals. lf newspapers were published in international competition, then the
which lies at the heart of this long
excluding them from
be an
position which has already been reached on Fleet Street could
stoppage, why I cannot accept their position, and believe indeed that their position will in the end
unmitigated disaster for them. The NGA, which represents some of the traditional skills of Fleet Street, is basically a good
not conceivably be maintained, but I do not believe it can be maintained in any case. lt is cheaper to
That includes the cost of paper and freight; the strict production cost
is
fifth of the London cost. At the present moment Fleet Street costs are still accelerating. It is certain that all the Fleet Street houses are greatly overmanned. The Times is probably one of the more tightly manned houses, if only because we have not been a very profitable newspaper for over a century. ln Frankfurt the staffproducing the paper numbered twenty-five Turks and fifteen Germans. This was a weekly, though only a few worked for more than one day on it, and was only sixteen pages, but even the 40 have to be compared with a pure production staff of 412 for a minimum 24 page paper in London. The German women compositors in Frankfurt set 1 8,500 characters an hour in their own language, and 12,500 in ours. about
a
On electronic equipment The Times
have put forward 10,000 as
a
leadership, both nationally and at
print newspapers almost anywhere in the world rather than London.
branch and house levels, and it
When we published an edition in
proposal, and the NGA has offered 7,000; on Linotype machines NGA members set about 3,500 characters an hour. A Linotype operator, who may now on Fleet Street be paid
Frankfurt we established that the Frankfurt level of costs was less than a third of the London level.
between 1250 and 0450 a week, thus has only 20 per cent. of the productivity of a German woman
trade union.
lt
is well organised;
has an intelligent and
it
capable
commands the loYaltY of a high proportion of its members. lt does not have the Problem of anarchY