—The Daily Collegian Friday, March 15,1991 Brooklyn's Spike Lee to teach film interpretation at Harvard BOSTON (AP) Brooklynite filmmaker Spike Lee is going Ivy League with plans to teach a film course at Harvard University next spring. Lee, director of such films as "Do the Right Thing" and "Mo' Better Blues," accepted an appointment as a visiting lecturer in the school's Afro-American Studies Department, he said yesterday. "I'm looking forward to it," Lee said in a telephone interview from his Forty Mules and an Acre Studio in New York City. Maxwell to go 'Forward With New York' By PETER ALAN HARPER Associated Press Writer NEW YORK Publisher Robert Maxwell reached an agreement yester day with the owner of the Daily News to take over the strike-weakened tabloid once its unions ratify job-cutting con tracts. The British publisher and Charles Brumback, president of the tabloid's owner, the Tribune Co., said the closing will be Wednesday, if the labor con tracts are approved. Maxwell urged the unions to do so "speedily." Brumback said the Tribune Co. would continue to publish the News through Wednesday; Maxwell's organization would take over the Thursday edition. Maxwell said his first headline would be, "Forward With New York." "Join please with me, the people who work for this newspaper, to make it a great success," Maxwell said to strikers and non-strikers alike. The sale announcement followed a bitter struggle between the News and the unions that included 13 months of Homeless newspaper hawkers fear loss of jobs By LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press Writer NEW YORK For Michael Brown, like many homeless people hawking the Daily News, the job meant a chance to get off the streets. Now that the tabloid has been sold to British pub lisher Robert Maxwell, Brown and dozens of other street peddlers hired during the 4 1 / 2 -month strike fear they may lose their jobs. "One way or another I'm going to survive, with or without the paper," Brown said Thursday as he waited for a Daily News truck to drop off his wares. Brown smiled with pride as he told how his estranged wife "messed the rent up and I was able to help pay it." "That came from here," he said, tapping his chest over his heart. fruitless negotiations and a 4 1 2-month strike. "There's a feeling of relief," said Edi tor James Willse. "More than relief, there's a feeling of renewal." The News, once the nation's most widely circulated newspaper, said it lost $114.5 million last year and was hem orrhaging $700,000 a day when Maxwell came in. Major advertisers abandoned the 71-year-old paper because of the strike; circulation was cut in half. Maxwell said 16 of the top 20 advertis ers are returning. Brumback was asked if, in retro spect, the Tribune Co. had made mis takes in its dealings with the unions. He replied: "We're not going to be looking through a rear view mirror. We'll be looking through the windshield." Maxwell said the Tribune Co. had tried its best to reach agreements with unions. But "the history of mistrust and distrust went so far and so deep" that talks were unsuccessful and finally the company "said they had enough." The labor negotiations collapsed on the last day of February. Without a sale, The chance to bail out his wife, to take his son to the movies each weekend, and to get a room, eat three meals a day and take his clothes to the cleaners had restored dignity to his life, he said. But once the newspaper's striking unions ratify con tracts with Maxwell, the need for hawkers is expected to diminish. The Tribune Co. announced yesterday it had com pleted an agreement to sell the paper, once the nation's largest, to Maxwell. The Tribune Co. was to publish the paper until Wednesday, giving unions time to ratify new contracts with the new publisher. The Daily News began hiring homeless people to hawk the paper several weeks into the strike. Many newsstand operators had refused to sell the paper out of sympathy with or fear of the strikers. The hawkers lined up in the rain yesterday to pay $2.50 for a stack of 100 copies of the afternoon edition today would have been the paper's last day. But Maxwell stepped in, and the Tri bune Co. offered him $6O million to take over the paper. Maxwell in return must assume an estimated $lOO million in lia bilities, including severance costs. The nine striking unions said Wednes day that they planned to return to work after ratification of agreements with Maxwell to cut 800 of 2,300 jobs as part of $72.8 million in cost cuts. Most unions planned votes by Sunday. Under the deal. workers who replaced strikers will lose their jobs. Also part of the contracts are $40,000 buyouts offered as inducements to workers to leave the News on the basis of seniority; others will be laid off. Still to be resolved are some problems with newsstand operators, who won't sell the paper until a hawker system set up during the strike is completely ended and until other smaller concessions are negotiated. The 28-member photoengravers union became the first to ratify the oral agreement. iiiikuyton ic.231 AEIVQIICS PLUS 321 Rear East Beaver Avenue State College, PA. 16801 2 Month al 234-1230 $59.00 State of the Art Equipment Professional Staff Non-Freezable/Non-Renewable NO LINES NO WAITING For Equipment State College's Premier Womans Fitness Center Robert Maxwell to sell for 35 cents each. The sellers then dispersed to meet rush-hour crowds. The amount of money the hawkers earn depends upon how many newspapers they sell. For each 100- paper stack they get about $32.50, which won't go far in New York City. But the homeless say that it at least allows them to buy some food. In November, Eddy Nadreau, a resi dent of the Atlantic Men's Shelter in Brooklyn, told of how he could earn about $74 selling newspapers in four hours of work. "I know hawkers that when I first started had noth ing," said Steven Rosato, the truck driver who deliv ered the newspapers. "Now they have good clothes, some have rooms. Some turned around their lives completely." Rosato, a replacement worker, also expects to lose his job once the unions ratify contracts with Maxwell. AP Laser Photo
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers