About 1,700 reporters, photographers and other editorial workers at the Associated Press will withhold bylines and credits for one day to protest the lack of a new contract.

All member news organizations that finance the AP cooperative — 1,550 U.S. newspapers, plus several thousand TV and radio stations in 120 countries — will get anonymous reports for 24 hours, starting today at about noon ET.

Will anyone notice, since many newspapers routinely delete AP bylines and edit stories down?

Perhaps not, says Tony Winton, an AP radio/TV reporter in Miami and Newspaper Guild spokesman. "We're the anonymous unsung heroes of the news business. But the statement we're trying to make is to the people we directly work for. We hope that people in the nation's newsrooms will notice."

The last large-scale byline strike lasted five days at The Washington Post in October. A new contract was reached in November.

Guild members at the AP have been working without a contract since November. Winton says a pay increase proposed by the AP — 1.9% a year — will be eaten up by an estimated 40% increase in health care costs. Guild members pay for a share of their health care.

Although many reporters at the AP and other newspapers and the AP also get merit raises, Winton says 77% of union members get either no merit pay or receive less than $50 in merit pay a week.

Though AP salaries vary nationwide, top scale at the AP in New York, which is reached after six years, is $1,088 a week or $56,500 a year.

By comparison, top weekly scale at The New York Times is $1,445; The Boston Globe, $1,260; The Wall Street Journal, $1,201; and the Chicago Sun-Times, $1,182.

A senior cook at The New York Times cafeteria earns $1,058, more than many top-scale AP reporters in Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas and Philadelphia, Winton says.

The AP had no comment.

-- Anonymous, January 09, 2003