Once upon a time, when newspapers were a little less high-toned and a little more fun, the Detroit Free Press sicced an armored military carrier on its archrival, The Detroit News.

Editors and reporters had borrowed the vehicle from Chrysler Corporation to cover Detroit's 1967 riots, and the reporter driving it parked it in front of the News and called over a bullhorn for Martin Hayden, the News's editor, urging him to turn himself in as a hostage. A photographer ambled out to record the surreal event.

Today, the costly war between the two papers may be coming to an end, with the Free Press the likely winner. This is not how the betting went a few years ago, when Knight-Ridder was threatening to close the Free Press, citing the millions it had lost in the 1980s, and Gannett, which had taken over the News in 1986, was boasting of its circulation surges over the Free Press.

What brought about the stunning reversal was the court-approved Joint Operating Agreement (JOA) between the two newspapers, the largest ever under the 1970 Newspaper Preservation Act. The News's circulation losses have been so steep since the JOA went into effect in 1989 that some observers believe the paper's days are numbered. "A lot of us think the newspaper is history," says Norman Sinclair, a veteran News investigative reporter.

Since September 1989, the News has lost 42 percent of its circulation, tumbling to an average daily circulation for the six months ending in September 1992 to 398,000. (Executives contend that the freefall is now over.) The Free Press, for its part, has lost only 7 percent, falling to about 580,000 daily. Circulation for the combined Sunday newspaper -- The Detroit News and Free Press is down by 21 percent.

Analysts had expected the corporations to divide $ 100 million within five years of the start of the JOA. Gannett executives won't say whether the News has earned any money since the JOA took effect; reliable sources say it has not. The Free Press, meanwhile, broke even in 1991 and earned an undisclosed amount last year that, according to sources, was small. Frank Vega, chief executive for the Detroit Newspaper Agency, which controls the newspapers' joint operation, says that in order to turn a joint profit the two papers will have to contain expenses and continue to develop market share.

"I know Gannett is deeply committed to the News," says Robert H. Giles, editor and publisher of the News. "We have every expectation that Detroit will have two very strong newspapers."

Still, doubts persist. "I've been hearing that it will bottom out for two years, and I'll believe it when I see it," says Bryan Gruley, a Washington, D.C.-based reporter of the News and author of a book about the JOA, called Paper Losses, to be published this summer. Before the JOA, the News was an allday paper and the Free Press was published in the morning. Gruley says Gannett's decision to accept an afternoon position for the News -- reached during negotiations with Knight-Ridder in the winter of 1986 -- turned the paper into a "doomsday machine."

Giving up its morning home sales cost the News about 90,000 readers, and surrendering the out-of-state market to the Free Press lost it another 80,000, according to Giles. The bad Michigan economy and price increases certainly didn't help.

Once jokingly called The Evening Snooze, the News is hardly that any more. Its reporting is more aggressive, its design more innovative, and its news coverage more diverse than before. As part of its change, the News added a column on gay and lesbian issues, another written in Black English, and a weekly item geared to teenagers called "Ask the Sex Lady." This is not the conservative newspaper that blue-collar autoworkers in Hamtramck and auto barons in Grosse Pointe once settled down to at night. The editorial page remains as conservative as ever, but it feels a little out of place.

Some say that by reinventing itself in an image similar to that of the more liberal Free Press, the News is losing its identity. "You look at them and you say, What have you got here? The same pictures. The same stuff. I don't know how readers put up with these things," says Ben Burns, the News's executive editor before Gannett's takeover, now a visiting professor of journalism at Wayne State University. Others see the the change as smart, considering the shrinkage of blue-collar jobs and the need to lure middle-income consumers.

There is a lingering suspicion at the News that Allen Neuharth -- who as Gannett's chairman plotted the JOA strategy for the News and then retired in April 1989 -- had anticipated that the News would sink, but that the JOA would still make money for Gannett. Neuharth strongly rejects this, saying he expected the News to lose some readers, but to still dominate the Free Press. Since Gannett holds three of the five seats on the Detroit Newspaper Agency's board, he thought the agency would favor the News in negotiations over such things as morning and afternoon publication runs. He also expected Gannett to push up the News's printing time, so it could be sold as early as 9 A.M. in towns such as Lansing and Battle Creek and delivered equally early to Detroit area homes. This never happened.

"I doubt if any or many of them [ at the News] thought they would lose it by the margin they have," says Neuharth. "If I were them, I'd hate me. I don't blame them, but they don't understand."

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