New York Diary

News Wars!

New York is not a one-paper town.

Almost everywhere else in America is. Everywhere else, Knight Ridder, the Tribune Co., and Gannett corner the market: they leave one another to their respective turfs, and conglomerate with or buy out or make bankrupt all their small-scale competitors. Local papers are gobbled up by the One that has been blessed by big-paper backing.

New York is not like that.

Here, newspapers compete. Sure, there's the New York Times. It's the best paper around, and we all know it. But who has time to read the Times? The Post is more accessible, with its bad puns for headlines and tabloid-style layout. Lots of people read the Post. But the Daily News has a loyal following, too, as does the Sun. And what about the New York Observer? And the Wall Street Journal (which has the same problem as the Times, except that it fits into even more of a niche market)? And, lest we forget, there are always the free papers.

This morning, today's new breed of paperboys stood outside my Lexington Ave subway station hawking their wares. "Metro! Metro Metro Metro!" one yelled, thrusting the paper at wary travelers. (I took one--Metro has reasonably good reporting, reliably touches the most important news of the day, and has a sudoku and a crossword, which are great selling points.) Another man yelled "Model on the front cover! amNew York! Model gets busted! Model on the cover!" He, too, was handing his papers out like a madman. (I didn't take one--amNew York has vapid reporting, and devotes two whole pages to "articles" about things you should buy (a squishy chair! new lipstick! these shoes!) .) Today, for the first time, a third, quieter girl had joined the fray. "Hurricane Rita?" she asked tentatively. "Would you like a free Sun?" She was not as successful as the two more experienced boys. (I took a Sun anyway--I'd never read it before, and unlike Metro and amNew York, the Sun is a broadsheet, which suggested good things about the depth of its articles.) And get this: desperate for market-share in a wide-open market, all three were free (though, to be fair, the Sun usually costs 25 cents).

I can't say that any of them are objectively good papers (though any can give you the major headlines, and Metro might even put them on the front page). But that isn't really the point. Here in New York, newspapers duke it out. They fight for their ability to bring us the news we want. They sit next to one another at subway stations, and yell for you to take them. They thrust themselves into your face. And you know what? Everybody reads the paper on the subway in the morning. They might be reading amNew York or the New York Post gossip section, but they're reading. Public transportation and the newspaper wars make this a city of readers. They also make this a city of great political awareness: everybody knows that Fernando Ferrer won the Democratic primary last week, that Anthony Weiner conceded the race, and that fourth-grade test scores went up on Mayor Bloomberg's watch--because everybody read these things in their morning paper.

posted by Skay @ 1:14 PM