3 Newspapers Vie for Readers, Desks

In an age of 500-channel cable systems, in a time of 24-hour news networks and hand-held wireless e-mail devices, Lancaster is a newspaper town.

But with a difference.

Where other, larger cities have one newspaper, Lancaster’s 55,500 people have three, vestiges of a long-lost era when newspapers were identified by their politics: a conservative, Republican-leaning journal in the afternoon; a morning paper that sees itself as moderate and often endorses Democrats, and a nonpartisan Sunday paper.

These three fiercely competitive and contradictory papers are owned by the Steinman family, which has been in newspapers in Lancaster since 1866.

All three papers share the same offices, in some cases the same desks.

“It’s a little weird, but we call it home,” said Pete Mekeel, managing editor of the afternoon New Era. (Mekeel is nearly blind from retinitis pigmentosa; he lays out the front page and edits the entire paper in his head. But that’s another story.)

Every morning, the New Era’s staff filters in -- first police reporter John Hoober at 5 a.m., then the editors, then other reporters, filling the 28 desks in the third-floor newsroom. By 11 a.m., the press starts printing that day’s edition of the afternoon paper; news staffers turn to the next day’s stories.

At 2:45 p.m., they leave.

After 3 p.m., the Intelligencer Journal’s troops arrive. They sit in chairs warmed by their competitors. Each desk has two sets of drawers -- New Era, Intelligencer Journal. They’re carefully locked at shift change.

The Sunday News, which uses a separate office during the week, moves its sports staff into the newsroom Saturday night.

This cohabitation has its ups and downs. Friction between the staffs “has moderated over the years,” said Ernie Schreiber, theNew Era’s editor. “It’s a kinder, gentler newsroom.”

Oh, there may have been times when, say, New Era staffers would carelessly leave notes from interviews on their desks, to be read by Intelligencer Journal reporters. Except that the interviews were bogus, concocted to “throw them on the wrong track,” Schreiber said.

John Spidaliere, a city reporter for the New Era, says a veteran reporter once gave him some advice: When you’re planning to cover a meeting, leave a copy of the agenda for a different meeting on your desk, to confuse the competition.

“We don’t talk to those guys,” said David Hennigan, editor of the Sunday News since 1984. “In fact, we don’t socialize.”

The papers fight over the timing of news conferences -- hold them at 9 a.m., says the New Era; hold them at noon, says the Intelligencer Journal. They battle for comics -- the Intelligencer Journal has “Get Fuzzy” and “Dilbert”; the New Era has “Zits” and “Peanuts.”

Until last year, staffers shared phone numbers , and New Era reporters lived in fear that sources would return their calls after 3 p.m. and give stories to the Intelligencer Journal. Now each phone has a toggle switch, and two different numbers.

Despite their common ownership, and perhaps because of their cheek-by-jowl proximity, the papers compete. “I’d almost rather lose a finger than have the morning paper beat me on a story,” said Dennis Fisher, the New Era’s sports editor.

The papers’ differences extend way back to the 19th-century’s partisan press. The Lancaster Intelligencer & Weekly Advertiser, first published in 1799, was stoutly Democratic -- a great supporter of Thomas Jefferson, and later a leading opponent of Abraham Lincoln (and, it was said, a “copperhead” opponent of the Civil War).

Andrew Jackson Steinman was Democrat to the bone, as his name would indicate. Son of a family that owned Lancaster’s leading hardware store, Steinman came to the rescue of the struggling Intelligencer Journal (it had combined with another paper in 1834) in 1866.

Under Steinman and his sons, John Frederick and James Hale, the Intelligencer Journal thrived. In 1923, they started the apolitical Sunday News. And then, in 1928, they purchased the New Era, a Republican newspaper in what was (and remains) a predominantly Republican community.

The papers’ divergent politics never changed.

“You have to have divergent views,” said Beverly Steinman, one of three daughters of Hale Steinman who now own Lancaster Newspapers.

John H. Brubaker III, the New Era’s editorial page editor and author of a book on the Steinmans, said: “They don’t exert any overt influence. They do set a tone.”

The Steinmans and their papers have a strong connection to Lancaster, a small city deep in Pennsylvania Dutch country that nonetheless has urban problems like drugs and crime.

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, the company decided to stay rather than build a new complex in the suburbs, redeveloping its historic home on King Street. Included was the site of Steinman Hardware -- now a restaurant called “The Pressroom,” where sandwiches are named after comic strips.

It was this commitment to downtown, says Lancaster Newspapers President John M. Buckwalter, that led the company to join a partnership to build a convention center and hotel up the street.

But the development is controversial, especially because it is to be funded with a tax on hotel rooms in the county. Hotel owners have said the papers are guilty of a conflict of interest that is reflected in their news coverage of the project and their editorial page support.

Schreiber of New Era and Ray Shaw, editor of the Intelligencer Journal, deny that their news pages are slanted or their editorials compromised. They support the project on its merits, they say. Each story they run mentions Lancaster Newspapers’ role in the venture.

If the newspapers are a throwback to a time when publishers were involved in everything in town, there are other ways too in which this company seems caught in a time warp.

Every staffer still gets a week’s bonus each December. The company still holds a big picnic each summer at Hershey Park. Staffers tend to stay forever -- the three editors have a total of 95 years’ service -- and the company has never laid off anyone, not even in the Depression.

“They don’t pay a lot. We don’t get a bunch of fringe benefits. But unless you really screw up, you’ve got a job for life,” Brubaker said.

Yesterday and today coexist comfortably. An old, brass pneumatic tube whisks paper to the composing room. At the same time, a new computer system is on the way, and all three papers were recently redesigned.

So the company is not immune to change. Its employees wonder: Could there come a time when the three staffs are combined, when Lancaster would have one daily? Surely there would be money saved.

Two years ago, for the first time, the Intelligencer Journal’s circulation surpassed the afternoon New Era’s (44,000 versus 43,000; the Sunday paper, 103,000). Nationally, afternoon newspapers have lost ground for decades.

Some at the Intelligencer Journal think that the New Era’s demise would not be a bad thing. Sports editor Jeff Young casts a covetous eye at New Era’s five sportswriters and editors, and thinks of all the stories the two staffs could write if they were “on the same team.”

But Buckwalter, the CEO, says nothing will change. The New Era remains the largest afternoon newspaper in Pennsylvania, and it still serves a distinct Republican readership, he says. To mess with the arrangement, he added, “wouldn’t be prudent.”

And you get the feeling that, deep down, the staffs of the newspapers know that they would miss the delicious and sometimes malicious competition.

“It makes you a better reporter,” said Spidaliere, the city reporter.

Spidaliere has an ongoing dispute with the woman who shares his desk, which he traces to the time he left a half-full coffee cup behind and she spilled it on herself.

“We don’t talk to each other anymore,” he said, but his desk mate (who declined comment) sometimes sends him nasty e-mails or leaves notes. When the Intelligencer Journal beats the New Era on a story, for example, she might send a note that says, “We win!”

“I don’t respond at all,” he said.

A pause, and a grin.

“It so seldom happens that they win.”