When American newspapers were in their heyday after World War II, the brassy, pictorial New York Daily News led all the rest. Its 1947 circulation of 2.4 million daily and 4.7 million Sunday was bigger than any daily achieves today, although the U.S. population has nearly doubled. But like many now vanished media giants, the News gradually succumbed to its own success: with profits pouring in, time and again, management agreed to union demands for unneeded jobs, overtime guarantees and restrictive work rules, rather than risk a strike. By the 1980s, featherbedding was so extreme that despite annual revenues approaching $425...
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