But, when it comes down to it, I doubt anybody is ever going to see that again.

I was struck at the SPJ meeting by the intensity of feeling. Everyone there seemed convinced that they were involved in an epic struggle closely watched by the newspaper industry and especially by executives at the headquarters of Gannett and Knight-Ridder, owners of the joint-operating agency that publishes the newspapers.

Such emotions are understandable for people whose lives had been turned upside down by the strike. But they also reflect how insular local newspaper people can become if they do not pay sufficient heed to the technological and other changes in their industry that doomed the Detroit strike from the beginning (see The Business of Journalism, September 1996).

Sure the newspaper industry was watching, but it saw the strike more as a curiosity than as something historic. Why would well-paid employees walk out when it was clear the newspapers could publish without them?

As for the executives at Gannett and Knight-Ridder, the Detroit strike ceased to be a major concern at midnight on December 31, 1995, when the books including the bulk of the strike-related losses were closed for the year. From the next day on, every dollar less the newspapers lost compared with the previous year was a dollar added to the bottom line for 1996.

By the end of 1996, each company's stock price had gone up 22 percent. At press time, Gannett's stock had risen another 7 percent and Knight-Ridder's 4 percent. They have the unions in Detroit to thank for much of this.

Defeats like that is prolly why the unions bought the Democrat Party along with progressives calling themselves Republicans.

Anyway, a wee trip in the way-back machine:

The Sterling Heights Officer pretty well says it best.  "The violence turn a lot of people off. A lot of public support went away."