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Tuesday, November 13, 1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comme
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Kansas Still in Debt
Glick and Ingalls—their names echo through Kansas' history. Every school child idolizes Glick, and the intense fires of mnp's souls, Right?
Wrong. Why, then, are these two unsung heroes enshrined as Kansas' representatives at Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol?
The general belief that Kansas is nothing but open prairie, dotted with a few basalt cliffs and mountains is enhanced by the anonymity of its heroes.
Kansas has had more distinguished citizens: Dwight Eisenhower, who spent his youth in Kansas, not only was president but also was a general of permanent service before being a general of permanent rank was a far more exclusive occupation than being president.
But who else should represent Kansas? William Allen White, Carrie Nation, Vern Miller, John Cameron Swavze?
Sen. Edmund Ross would be a logical selection. Ross' bravery, according to President John F. Kennedy, probably saved the nation. Ross was the senator whose one vote prohibited the conviction of President Andrew Johnson on impeachment charges.
The importance of Ross' vote, if not evident, was profound. Had Johnson been removed from office,
Alexander Hamilton's dream of a vigorous and independent executive branch would have become a Congressionally dominated nightmare like the 1781 Confederation.
the impeachment charges against Johnson were almost totally political. Congress demanded that the defeated South be treated like a conquered nation. Johnson, following the philosophy of his predecessor, Abraham Lincoln, refused.
Many historians blame Johnson's impeachment on his lack of tact. Others say that if Lincoln had survived Ford's Theater, even he would have succumbed to impeachment.
Ross recognized the danger of Congress arbitrarily removing a president from office because it found him personally disagreeable or because it disagreed with his policies, but he "looked down into his open grave" and voted against conviction.
Ross' courage earned him a place in Kennedy's book, "Profiles in Courage." But it also earned him a quick defeat at the Kansas polls, scorn, ridicule and eventual poverty. "And I lost," he added. Kansas owes more.
America and Kansas owe more than that to Sen. Ross.
Eric Meyer
Rejoice, It's Working
Cheer up, all of you who are so depressed by the current state of affairs, the scandals, the shortages and the disappointments, the things were a lot worse a year ago.
Not even callused Nixon haters get much delight from the possibilities of presidential impeachment. But, from the point of view of one who had already become discouraged with goings-on in the administration and revelations of scandal and the repudiations of the Nixon administration are a refreshing sign of a healthy democratic process.
A year ago, Richard Nixon was celebrating one of the greatest landslide victories in the history of presidential elections. The bungled Watergate burglary had already occurred and was a minor campaign issue. But few imagined that this burglury would set off such a raft of scandals that would cripple the executive branch.
The problems now plaguing the country are not new. It has simply taken the public this long to catch up with them. The awareness of such problems is now necessary to solving them. That is why I have such optimism in a time of trouble.
A short time later, Nixon ordered the largest non-nuclear bombing in history on cities in North Vietnam, killing an estimated 1,000 civilians each week. The bombs sometimes landed on allied troops, and the bombing punished the civilians of North Vietnam far worse than the British citizenry were by the German bombings in World War II
Americans defended this action and the behavior of men like Lt. William Calley, My Lai murderer, with an insensitivity that would have made Hitler blush. During the war, he was killed by a bullet. Time magazine declared Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger "men of the year."
It was at this time that I became immersed in the darkest pools of depression. The crushing blow of public affairs could no longer remain detached from my daily rituals.
How frustrating it is to have the world seemingly crumble and to have very few people even notice it. How could the American public overwhelmingly elect a man like Richard Nixon? How could anyone whose brain was not already adored by Barack Obama be Republican bias not have enough sense to see through the ironies of Nixon's administration?
Anyone who claims to have predicted the full extent of the dramatic events which have occurred in the last year is a liar or a fool. And this not meant to be an "I-told-you-so" editorial. But there were many warnings of the evil that ultimately resulted from the way the government was being run.
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How many analysts warned of the dangers of having a seclusive President who preferred secrecy and sought nearly unlimited power? The impounding of congressional allocations, the increasing power of appointed aides like H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, administrative paraniace concerning the press and dissenters, the ITT and Watergate cases and early credibility doubts were an indication of things to come.
Environmentalists, similarly, have warned about pollution problems for decades. The energy crisis came more suddenly, but it was foreseen by men who were ignored or considered to be kooks.
Today the country is faced with unprecedented scandal. Only 27 per cent of those polled recently in the Gallup Survey said they approved of Nixon's presidency. Time magazine printed its first editorial in its history and it requested Nixon's resignation.
Gasoline was scarce last summer, and some Americans may be shivering in unheated homes this winter.
But the problems are at last being realized and bold actions are being taken to correct them. The executive branch is rid of dishonest and dangerous men and the power to curb those actions has erupted. The cleansing of the branch has been, in this case, a painful but productive process.
So cheer up. Now is not the time to curl up and whimper about the state of the world. Now it is time to grab the political process with both hands, realize past errors and take bold initiatives to solve our problems and acquire better leadership. —Bill Gibson
The energy crisis is now on the front burner of public interest and significant actions are at last being seriously implemented.
Computer Not Journalism Cure-All
By ROBERT C. MAYNARD
WASHINGTON—The late Norbert Weiner, frequently referred to as the father of the computer, made an observation once that is pertinent to the current ferment in the newspaper business over the use of technology. Weiner said science is like a candy store, and if you have enough money, you may buy anything you want.
It would have been inconceivable to a lawyer practicing a generation ago that a time would come when he could merely press a few typewriter keys and have, within seconds, all the legal decisions relevant to a particularly complicated case. As we will see in Section 12, let many information retrieval systems are becoming increasingly commonplace.
Now, a series of technological developments threaten to bring the news business along more quickly than many had ever done. And more quickly than many journalists believe wise.
Most of the emphasis of the new technology has been on the production of artificial intelligence.
JOURNALISM, LIKE THE LAW, often has been thought of as being tied to tradition in doing its business; slow to change, wedded to the past.
and the craft unions are in protracted discussions all across the land over the loss of jobs to machinery and the problem of low wages. The government has various aspects of the new technology.
These arguments have been going on for several years and will only be solved through long and difficult bargaining and discussion. Technology might be able to eliminate the needn't replace the problems of human beings to solve their problems with each other.
write those discussions go on, other aspects of journalism are increasingly affected by the capabilities of the computer. We are discovering we have a long way to go before we achieve a smooth relationship between news and the computer becomes possible.
IN LAW, research is indispensable to journalism. When an important news event occurs, whether a major fire or some dramatic political development, the evidence must be important or the issue must first learn as much as possible about what has gone before.
The journalist's repository of the past, the library morgue, is a place where tons of yellowed newspaper clippings are stored. A collection of the early pulps in a bloor. Poorly organized ones
A small-town editor was once writing an editorial about Abraham Lincoln and attempted to put his hand on the pertinent clippings. He found nothing filed under what seemed to be the logical categories. He tried to create a "assassinations?" No. In exasperation he summoned his librarian from lunch. "Deceased" was the right answer.
have been known to drive otherwise stable soils to strong drink.
So the inheritors of Norbert Weiner's philosophy have come to the rescue of the journalist in a hurry. But, as the old mathnatician warned, it hasn't been
SPOTTED AROUND THE NEWBOOM are video display terminals. A reporter can ask the computer some very sophisticated questions, such as the dates of all the stories in which, for one example, the names of Willy Brandt, Richard Nixon and Alexi Kossign appear together. The terminal will light up with the stories listed by
Because of an expenditure so far amounting to several million dollars, you can learn in the library of the New York Times the date and subject of every clipping mentioning Abraham Lincoln. And you can find something surprising through a single pile of yellowed, faded clipings.
date, and it will give a few key words on what each story is about.
Besides, the system has a flaw that many reporters at the Times find vexing, to say nothing but at the dates and the two or three-word dialogues mentioned Nikon, Brandt and Kosygin together, you might conclude that one story needs to be told what you need to make a good story better.
Any number of instances occur in which the ability to cross-reference public figures in a hurry would prove very useful to a journalist. The computer can make that possible, but the cost so far has been almost astronomical.
At that point, you press the button that ordinarily would cause the selected story to be displayed on the screen. As you sit there rubbing your palms in anticipation, the machine tells you the equivalent of "Wait until tomorrow."
THE REASON IS SIMPLE, and human,
too human for the taste of some reporters.
The machine can tell the reporter all or
not all about the camera. If the
reporter actually wants to see the
story, a human being has to fetch it and
it down before the camera's eye. If that
human being is out to lunch, off for the day
or otherwise, you have to go to the
camera.
For some time to come, it is fair to guess that much of the merging of journalism and computer technology will face flaws of that type, an even higher order of magnitude.
Newspapers are rushing to the "hardware" manufacturers buying millions of dollars of research and equipment that either doesn't work at all or only works for a portion of the time, doing less than norbert Weinreich's minutes promise of their machinery.
In a recent buletin, the American Newspaper Publishers Association warned its members against paying cash for the new machinery. Always hold back some of the equipment associated with association warred, so you can have time to reinstall the equipment works before you pay for it.
WHILE THAT IS PROBABLY sound advice to anyone making a major purchase in this Nader-conscious age, it is especially good advice to newspapers. Some journalists, in fact, are openly debunking the new technology.
Eventually, the marriage between journalism and technology will probably work about as well as other similar unions. Computer technicians will get the hang of journalism, and tomorrow's journalists have a better grasp of what makes comedy work. Journalists often work them for the news. But as the Times experience suggests, it isn't going to replace jobs nearly as quickly as some publishers hope—or as some workers fear.
Innovations Confront Newspapers
The Washington Post
Rv ROBERT C. MAYNARD
For more than a half a century, few would have disputed that claim.
WASHINGTON- The president of the New York Typographical Union observed a demonstration of the Mergenthaler linetype machine in the summer of 1890 and declared, according to a contemporary issue of Scientific American magazine, that "the acme of perfection in a typesetting machine has been reached."
Publishing of the American daily newspaper now stands on a new threshold, the era of the electron. What appeared to be a revolution in Mergenthalte's time is now a horse and buggy compared to what seems possible during the next decade.
It is already possible for the journalist to compose a story on a cathode ray tube terminal instead of a typewriter, to have his composition stored in a computer memory bank, for an editor to make corrections without using a pencil and, indeed, for the story never to appear on a piece of copy paper.
tury, it will leave behind some serious human problems.
Bertram Powers, president of Local 6 of the International Typical Union of New York, has been one of the critics of publishing's leap into the next century. The men he represents are fearful for their futures.
"No publisher," Powers said in a recent conversation, "just throws out all of his old equipment and moves in new equipment overnight. It's done in a gradual, orderly fashion. Why should it be done any differently with people?"
IN NEW YORK, Washington and cities across the country where publishers are experimenting with varying degrees of success with the new technology, the phone newspaper workers will strike over the issues that flow from technological change.
Various solutions are proposed that include in some instances guaranteeing the jobs of present production employees for life. Deciding who, for these purposes, is an
employees is one of the problems that appears likely to smar! the talks. In New York, for example, 400 to 500 jobs are in dispute on that issue. The publishers argue that persons who work fewer than five days a week are substudies and therefore not part of the package. Powers insists they be included. They also argue that solutions to those questions will be found. While they are being worked out, techniques that could replace nearly the entire plant of today's average newspaper are moving along at a rapid pace.
Today photocomposition has all but eliminated the use of hot metal for the setting of display advertising copy. The typographer for most newspapers today punches paper tape and a computer drives the typesetting machine at a rate many times faster than the one man on Mergergarten's listerotype machine could set type.
Tomorrow is a different story.
Newspapers such as the Washington Post,
and York Times are selling newspapers.
with various forms of optical scanning that will make it possible for the reporter's copy to pass through a beam of light and become an inmulse in a computer.
By converting to photo-offset printing methods, it also possible, in time, that all hot lead will disappear from tomorrow's newspaper, and with it hundreds of people now necessary to the production of the average newspaper.
Wat with lower patien Marti health
There is no easy way to kick the habit,
especially when the drug is TV football.
BEN BAGDIKIAN, writing in the spring issue of Columbia Journalism Review, has estimated that some production costs in the average newspaper eventually may be reduced by as much as 50 per cent, making possible vastly increased profits.
If there happens to be such a thing as Armchair Athletes Anonymous, with the aim of liberating men from the curse of television sports to a more wholesome and productive leisure life, I offer myself as an inspiration.
In an age when newspapers are increasingly concentrating their ownerships, the computer and the savings it makes possible could well allow small publishing enterprises to flourish as they once did, before the cost of labor under the older technology helped to collapse publishing efforts across the land.
MOREOVER, IT IS becoming increasingly likely that before the end of the decade, a reporter's stories will be brought together with other stories and advertisements on a regular basis in the version of a television screen, and be laid out in full-page format and etched directly onto a plastic printing plate. And all this in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of the present process of producing a newspaper
What would have been inconceivable to that typographical union president eight decades ago is very real today to the typographical union presidents of locals all across the country. And it is these men, along with other craftsmen and press observers, who fear that as American journalism makes this leap into the 21st cen-
u
TV Sports Habit Kicked
By JACK SMITH
**MIND YOU**, I didn't lick it overnight.
made my first tentative progress one Sunday last year when the Rams were on the road to win, and then I deliberately got in my car and drove down
The Los Angeles Times
Success like that gave me the confidence to see if I could kick Notre Dame and USC this year. That would be a critical test. I was ready to say that series since my marmur school days.
to Redondo Beach for a walk around the pier. The fresh air made me hungry, though, and I dropped into a bar for a beer and a sandwich. It wasn't my fault that they had their TV tuned in on the game. Even so, I only saw the last two quarters.
I promised my book to spend the weekend working on my book. USC-Note Dame was scheduled to start at 11 Saturday morning. I kept my eye on the clock. At 11:10 I relaxed. If you can get through the kickoff, you're all right.
Griff and the Unicorn
The plaza has a Montgomery Ward at one end and a May Company at the other, with an air conditioned mall of shops in between. Half a dozen men were standing in front of a bank of TV sets tuned in on the game. There were so many identical images it looked like a photograph of a tiffy eye. Not necessarily there were on the Irish 29-yard line with eight minutes left. It would have taken a stronger man than I not to watch the next play.
IT WAS 1.P.M. when I decided to take a KLIP over to the new Eagle Rock Plaza for lunch.
an earnest young man wearing a maroon jacket walked up to our group. "Is anybody around?"
No one paid him any attention. Anthony
have got the ball and let it go.
And I have not umbled it away.
Everyone cursed; even the salesman, I think.
"Mops?" he said. "This is the television department."
I walked on to the May Company and went up to a man who looked like a salesman.
I'm writing this on Sunday morning, I don't intend to rest on my laurels. As I write, the clock is moving toward kickoff time for the Rams and Vikings. It both undefeated, and it's got to be the game of the year. It will be hard to resist. If I succeed, I will tear this column up and write another one.
HE WAS STANDING beside a big screen on which, I noticed, the Notre Dame fans were swarming down on the field, mobbing their team. That's what I've always hated about Notre Dame. They think winning is everything.
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