{"id":205,"date":"2005-04-08T10:07:03","date_gmt":"2005-04-08T18:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2005\/04\/tabloid_wars.html"},"modified":"2005-04-08T10:07:03","modified_gmt":"2005-04-08T18:07:03","slug":"tabloid_wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/04\/tabloid_wars.html","title":{"rendered":"Tabloid Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the more amusing things you see are the daily snipes the two big tabloids take at each other — not always amusing enough to point out, but amusing nonetheless. So here’s a good New Yorker piece<\/a> on the recent (Drudgetastic<\/a>) kerfuffle between the Daily News and the Post:<\/p>\n

No longer can it be said that the News, traditionally the more restrained of the city\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rival tabloids, lacks a fighting spirit. The paper, reeling (or so said the Post, many times) from a lotto-game debacle that awarded cash prizes to thousands of readers by mistake, stepped up last Monday and finally played Hatfield to the Post\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s McCoy. First, the News touted its own success\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0153daily newsad sales hit record high\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhile also noting the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sorry picture of the shrinking business prospects of the New York Post.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Then, over the next several days, it ran a series of articles exposing an apparent \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dump-and-pump\u00e2\u20ac\u009d scheme at the Post, a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153frantic, desperate effort\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to boost circulation through bulk sales. The News, of course, has the higher circulation of the two.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, back from vacation, Mort Zuckerman reported with pleasure that the attention seemed to be increasing Scratch n\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Match participation. He also said that the News\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 dump-and-pump story, which referred to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bloody shrapnel from publisher Lachlan Murdoch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s carpet-bombing propaganda machine,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was not retaliatory. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a response, obviously, to this latest\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhat my grandfather would have called mishegoss, which is a Yiddish word for craziness,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Who was that sociologist at Columbia\u00e2\u20ac\u201dRobert Merton?\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwho said that every group has a reference group? Our reference group is not the Post\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit is our readers.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Up at Post headquarters, Lachlan Murdoch tried to play nice. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really think about the Daily News that much,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. But when he learned that a reporter had spoken with Zuckerman he asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How were the Gal\u00c3\u00a1pagos?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He referred repeatedly to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Scratch n\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Stiff,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d without winking or smiling, and accused the News, on the issue of bulk orders, of being a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pot calling the kettle black,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d since the News sells a lot of bulk copies, too.<\/p>\n

Col Allan, the editor, arrived, complaining about the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hypocrisy of these people,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and seemed more eager for a scrap. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still shoving fifty papers a day in bulk into the prisons of the mentally insane on Wards Island,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I mean, give me a break.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I might even read the Daily News if I were stuck in a white padded cell,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Murdoch said.<\/p>\n

Allan laughed: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes, very good.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Murdoch said that he thought the nicknames had gone too far.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It may have been a little exuberant,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Allan said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to remember that the folks at the Daily News have this curious view of the world, and it really is that they feel that they can throw shit at the fan and never get dirty.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Allan got up to leave. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If they want to attack us,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153they shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do it in the business section\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbecause nobody reads it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the more amusing things you see are the daily snipes the two big tabloids take at each other — not always amusing enough to point out, but amusing nonetheless. So here’s a good New Yorker piece on the recent (Drudgetastic) kerfuffle between the Daily News and the Post: No longer can it be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new_york_daily_news","category-new_york_post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}