Killing news in motor city.

From the A.F.L.-C.IO.'s freelance political commercials to the romance of Union Summer, organized labor seems to have achieved a visibility unthinkable only a few years ago. In Detroit, more than 2,000 union employees of the city's newspapers, the "Detroit News" and the "Detroit Free Press," have been on strike since July 1995. Owned by Gannett and Knight Ridder respectively-the country's two largest newspaper chains-the News and Free Press gave up decades of fierce competition in 1989 to become contented partners in a joint-operating agreement, a sort of federally licensed monopoly that allowed them to unite their publishing operations while remaining nominally distinct.