Top Brass From Newspapers Will Attend Harvard Workshop

Top executives from several newspapers and the Associated Press will come to Harvard in late February to attend a new five-day workshop on growth and changes in information industries.

Sending the recommended number of two executives to the workshop will cost an organization $2750, according to the workshop prospectus. Workshops have expenses, and "we have to make ends meet," Anthony G. Oettinger '51, professor of Information Resources Policy, who is organizing the workship, said yesterday.

Oettinger said expenses include hotels, meals and speakers' fees.

Speakers will include former Democratic Senator from Wyoming Gale W. McGee, Lewis M. Branscomb, vice president and chief scientist of IBM, and John T. Dunlop, Lamont University Professor and former Secretary of Labor, Oettinger's secretary said.

The reason for the workshop is that developments like the declining dependability of the post office, the rising cost of paper, and the falling cost of electronic communication influence the ways people decide to transmit information, and such changes pose threats and opportunities for newspapers, Oettinger said.

James C. Thomson, Jr., curator of the Nieman Foundation that is co-sponsoring the workshop, said the workshop will give the journalists who are Nieman Fellows a change to meet with members of the newspaper management.

The workshop is also in line with the University's goal of making its facilities available to more and different kinds of people, Thomson said.

Oettinger said that so far eleven executives, mostly from middle-sized newspapers and chains have signed up to come.

"Small newspapers don't have the resources, and the big ones are too smug. Middle-sized newspapers are the most alive and concerned about what the future might hold for them," Oettinger said.