Page:Columbia Journalism Review volume 2 issue 1.djvu/38

AROUND THE MAP

frustration; he asked if outside determination of the issue would be acceptable. Both sides said it was not.

Feelings ran high in the live audience of 150, where several shades of opinion were represented. Applause and hoots followed many answers. Seltzer drew his only strong negative reaction of the evening after Wical had said he intended to go back to his copy editing job at the Press. Seltzer said in reply: "That's one about which, at this time, I make no comment." The remark drew a smattering of boos, and the Guild subsequently made Wical's continued employment a further condition for settling.

A number of Guildsmen in the audience asked. questions hostile to Wical and the union leadership. These barbs came from the considerable faction of editorial workers wanting to drop the union-shop demand. The dissidents had actually won one back-towork vote, only to have it overturned.

The moderator called on a number of Press reporters, who turned out to be in the rebellious faction of

Local coverage: account in union-run Cleveland Record of the Seltzer-Wical debate

the Guild. One from their ranks, Forrest Allen, asked the final question of Wical: "How long are you prepared to keep us out on this issue?" Over Wical's. response, a voice from the back shouted, "We want to go back now!"

Wical said later that he felt it was a "curious coincidence" that dissident Guildsmen were recognized while "loyal" Guildsmen were not. Clausen says that, in retrospect, he considers the question period unfavorable to Wical, and that he probably should have called for questions first to one side and then to another. He says he was amazed at the number of antiWical questioners and surprised that the Guild leadership had not turned out more support for Wical.

At the next meeting of the Press Guildsmen, the dissidents won a vote to accept management's terms. After feeble efforts to win more money, the strike of American Newspaper Guild Local Number 1 was ended, overriding the recommendation of international headquarters.

What did the debate accomplish? Seltzer believes that it helped bring about a quicker settlement. He says he received letters and calls nine to one in his favor. Wical feels that the debate had no effect, that the give-in vote would have come anyway, and that public opinion had little to do with what took place at the bargaining table.

The accuracy of these varying estimates and the public's reception of the debate-is impossible to assay. No polls measured the audience. No follow-up research team or applause meter rendered a decision. One limited survey by local newsmen found that more than half of a small number of Clevelanders questioned had seen or heard at least part of the debate. Estimates by broadcasters were higher.

Ultimately, Guild opinion certainly proved more important than public opinion. As the question period dramatically revealed, the Guild was divided. The extent to which this division was exploited by management may have had more bearing on the end of this phase of the strike than a newspaper, less audience's choice of the better side.

For broadcasting, the unique program spread the "great debate" formula from the political to a nonpolitical arena. Clausen, both a broadcaster and a principal, found the results good: "A certain amount. of enlightenment was available to those who wanted to get it. The public got more information than it had ever had assembled at one time."

But Variety, in reviewing the Cleveland event said: "A Kennedy-Nixon embroglio, it was not.... The yak session did little to enlighten the community; it did offer the broadcasting industry an opportunity to provide another display of public service."