Testy Tabloid Tit For Tat p. 14

By: ALLAN WOLPER NEW YORK DAILY News owner and publisher Mort Zuckerman started the testy tabloid tit for tat with an offhand remark at the recent annual awards dinner of the Deadline Club, the New York chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
"I don't think the New York Post has changed and I am grateful for that," said Zuckerman, who was guest speaker at the affair.
The Daily News owner then elaborated on his tart analysis when Editor & Publisher telephoned to ask him precisely what he meant.
"The New York Post is not taken seriously. They are more of a comic book than a newspaper. They have more entertainment and gossip than news."
Ken Chandler, who became editor of the Post in 1993, took exception to Zuckerman's claim that the paper's news coverage has stagnated the past three years.
"I'm glad he got it off his chest and I hope he feels better," said Chandler. "It is apparent to anyone who reads the Post that we have changed dramatically."
Chandler viewed Zuckerman's surprise attack on the Post as a sign that the Daily News is worried about its tabloid rival.
"I can only speculate that he doesn't like the fact that we've added a paper on the seventh day, our new Sunday edition, and that we keep getting bigger and better," Chandler said in a telephone interview.
Zuckerman's unexpected critique of the Post at the awards dinner was part of a 20-minute speech in which he predicted that the paper with the best news product would survive the bloody economic war between the two tabloids.
"This was the toughest challenge I ever had," Zuckerman told the 200 journalists at the May 14 dinner in the Sheraton New York Hotel. "When I bought the Atlantic Monthly and U.S. News & World Report, I inherited a legion of problems. But they weren't as broken as the Daily News.
"We've taken a long time, but we're on the right track. We've been doing important investigations. Our series on school leasing forced the board of education to change the way it does business.
"We don't compete against the New York Post. We are competing against ourselves. Our paper is more comprehensive. Just look at the size of our news hole and look at theirs.
"They spend more time on entertainment and gossip than on city news, which is why they are not taken seriously."
Chandler politely disagreed, saying the Post had published a school leasing investigation a year before the Daily News expos?.
Chandler also downplayed the difference in the amount of news space allocated to each organization.
"The size of a news hole doesn't necessarily mean anything," Chandler insisted. "In our case, it is the quality that counts. And we win hands down on that. It is hard to know what pressures animated his comments. I can only speculate that our strong competition is weighing on his mind."
The News and the Post agree that they each have an entrenched readership that will buy them no matter what was in the paper. But they disagree on whether the two of them can coexist in a city that has an extensive electronic news base competing for advertisers.
"There was not enough advertising to support three tabloids in New York," said Zuckerman. "There probably isn't enough to support two papers. There probably is only enough to support one paper."
Zuckerman was referring to the three-way tabloid confrontation that pitted New York Newsday, the Post and the News against each other.
Times Mirror, parent company of Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, abandoned its New York City edition last fall, leaving the shrinking New York City tabloid field to the News and Post.
The Audit Bureau of Circulations FAS-FAX figures for the six month period that ended March 31 showed the Daily News daily circulation was 758,509, an increase of 32,910.
The Post circulation was listed as 418,255, a jump of 10,051, for the same time frame.

?("The New York Post is not taken seriously. They are
more of a comic book than a newspaper. They have more entertainment and gossip than news.") [Caption]
?(? Mort Zuckerman, owner and publisher, New York Daily News) [Photo & Caption]
?("I can only speculate that he doesn't like the fact that we've added a paper on the seventh day, our new Sunday edition, and that we keep getting
bigger and better.") [Caption]
?(? Ken Chandler, editor, New York Post) [Caption]