Universitv Daily Kansan / Wednesdav. March 11. 1987 **11**.
Staff worries about CBS' future
The Associated Press
NEW YORK - CBS News, the network of Edward R. Murrow, is reeling from the abrupt firing of more than 200 of its 1,200 news employees, prompting current and former staffers to worry about its future.
Former CBS News president Bill Leonard said in a telephone interview from his Washington home that last week's layoffs were "horrifying."
"I frankly despair for the future of CBS News," he said.
Former "CBS Evening News" executive producer Burton Benjamin, now at the Gannett Center for Media Studies at Columbia University, said he felt "tremendous sadness," but predicted that the network would rebound.
However, former CBS correspondent Hughes Rudd, who is retired in the south of France, called the cuts "long overdue."
long overdue.
a long and outspoken critic of network news even when he was in the thick of it, Rudd left CBS for ABC seven years ago, and retired last year.
"The fact is, all the network news divisions got so fat and happy," Rudd said in a telephone interview. "For years, it seems to me, they didn't even care about your expense accounts as long as you turned in something to show for it. Money used to fly around like dead leaves at CRS."
Last week, CBS News took another plunge, this time firing 214 employees, including 14 on-air personnel, and cutting about $30 million from the approximately $300 million annual news budget.
All three networks are faced with projections of shrinking growth in advertising revenues, but they are stymied by long-term production contracts that account for much of their budget. The only short-term answer is to lay off personnel, and all
three networks did, by the hundreds,
last year.
the taxofws were part of a reorganization plan by CBS News President Howard Stringer. Stringer's plan would end the exclusive assignment of some correspondents and producers to certain news broadcasts, and close bureaus in Seattle, Wash.; Warsaw, Poland; and Bangkok, Thailand.
The other two networks are preparing reassessments, too. BBC News President Lawrence Grossman is now on a tour of bureaus in the Far East, and ABC News President Roone Arledge has been pow-wowing with management.
The perhaps inordinate attention paid to CBS News is something of a back-handed compliment to the network of Walter Crankite, Eric Severid and Murrow, who gained an unsurpassed reputation while guiding the news division in the 1950s.
"Our dilemma is this: Are we a business or a public trust? The answer is both. But how is it going to work? Which comes first?"
"CBS Evening News" anchor Dan Rather stated the central issue yesterday in an editorial column in the New York Times titled "Murrow or Mediocracy?"
Rather went on to suggest, however, that budget cuts ordered by CBS' new boss, Laurence Tisch, and carried out by Stringer would make it "between difficult and impossible" for CBS to uphold its standards.
He said the cutback "means we will cover less news."
Babv-boomers color the nation gray
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The nation's population grew and grayed between 1980 and 1986, the Census Bureau said yesterday, with the total number of Americans up 6.4 percent to 241,566,000 and the median age up 1.8 years to 31.8.
The aging of the baby-boom generation, those born between 1945 and 1960, is the principal reason for the grazing of the general population, the bureau said.
The highest increase shows in the age group between 35 and 44 years old, up 29 percent since 1980. "This aging trend is expected to continue as the early baby-boom generation heads toward middle age," the
report said.
The report also said there were more women than men in the population, with 123,776,000 females and 117,820,000 males. The black population increased faster than the rest of the nation up 10 percent or 2.6 million people, and now totals 29.4 million people, or 12.2 percent of the total population, up 4 percent from the figure of 1980, the bureau said.
Black women outnumber black men, 15.4 million to 14 million.
The median age of the overall population was 31.8. For whites, it was 32.7 and for blacks, 26.9.
The population of minorities other than blacks grew more rapidly than blacks or whites at 45 percent, the report said, principally because of
high immigration.
Two-thirds of other-race growth between 1880 and 1986 was from immigration, compared with 15 percent for the black population, the report said.
Bureau officials also said they saw an "echo effect," as baby boomers have babies. The under-5 population grew between 1980 and 1986 from 16.3 million to 18.1 million, or 10.9 percent.
"There are now more pre-school aged children than there have been since July 1, 1967, when there were 18.6 million," the report said. "This fact foreshadows larger cohorts of new entering school in the near future."
Underscoring that change, the
bureau said that although the number of 5- to 13-year-olds dropped by 2.6 percent between 1980 and 1986, from 31.2 million to 30.3 million, that school-age population increased by 237,000 between July 1, 1985, and July 1, 1986.
"This increase marks the turnaround of a long period of decline in the number of 5- to 13-year-olds," the report said in predicting continued growth.
The teenage and young adult populations declined between 1980 and 1986, the report said, with the number of 14- to 17-year-olds dropping 8.9 percent to 14.8 million while the population of 18- to 24-year-olds declined to 28 million.
Deadlock ends; House to vote on 65 mph bill
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Congressional negotiators cleared the way yesterday for the House to vote next week on whether to raise the speed limit on rural interstate highways to 65 mph.
The House vote was scheduled for a week from today after House negotiators ended a deadlock with their Senate counterparts, who have already approved the speed limit increase.
"If it fails, then the speed limit stays at 55." said Rep James Howard. D.N.J. in opening the third week of House-Senate negotiations on
the stalled multibillion-dollar federal highway bill. "If it passes, then the speed limit may be raised on rural interstates if a state so desires.
"The additional deaths and injuries will be the responsibility of those who have supported the higher speed limit."
Howard is chairman of the Public Works and Transportation Committee and head of the House highway bill negotiators.
But Howard and the House negotiators offered last week to go along with the speed limit increase only if states could demonstrate strict compliance with mandatory seat belt laws or show that the faster speed limit would not result in more highway deaths. The Senate rejected those restrictions.
sands of serious injuries since taking effect 13 years ago.
Midwest BUSINESS SYSTEMS, INC.
Howard said he "did not give in on this issue" by abandoning his opposition to a speed limit increase. It was important to break the House-Senate stalemate so the bill could be approved and the states could receive federal highway money, he said.
The deadlock was broken when Howard announced unexpectedly that allowing a full House vote on the thorny issue would be fair. It was Howard who sponsored the 1974 bill lowering the interstate speed limit from 70 mph to 55 mph.
An ardent foe of raising the speed limit, Howard said the lower speed limit has saved a minimum of 26,000 lives and perhaps hundreds of thou-
The Senate, spurred by pleas from Western states with long stretches of rural interstates, voted earlier for the speed limit increase, insisting that it be part of the highway money bill.
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