PAPERS NEEDED MORE THAN EVER
Those letter writers rejoicing over the evisceration of the New York Daily News claiming, because of its “far left” antiTrump slant, it deserved last week’s guillotining of half its newsroom staff, clearly do not realize they are rooting against their own best interests.
If they care enough to write, they obviously care about the world around them, meaning even a paper whose politics they loathe plays a vital role in what ostensibly matters most to them.
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government,” Thomas Jefferson, the author of our Declaration of Independence, famously noted, “I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Billing itself as “New York’s hometown paper,” the News is as synonymous with New York as Coney Island or Times Square, but more importantly it is a venerable voice in the marketplace of ideas where all points of view need to be aired.
TV’s evening news does little to meet that need; indeed, its lead stories frequently come from that morning’s headlines.
Talk shows? Where do you think their fodder comes from?
OK, there’s bias here where a romantic fascination with the business has never faded. Our late editorial art director, Eddie Barrett, really nailed it as he counted his blessings on his death bed.
“I often thought of myself as the athlete who gets paid to do what he loves,” Eddie said. “When big stories break, everyone takes their game to a higher level, just like athletes do in the playoffs. My staff does it with art; you guys do it with words; the headline writers and photographers have their own forms of communication.
“There’s no feeling in the world like picking up your paper the first thing in the morning, liking what you see, knowing you were a part of it. And we get that kick almost every day of our lives.”
Favorite writers? They come and go.
A newspaper is so much bigger than any of them.
A century ago, when his syndicated column had 20 million followers, Arthur Brisbane was offered a six-month paid vacation by William Randolph Hearst in appreciation of his legendary work.
“There are two reasons why I will not accept your generous offer,” Brisbane wrote to The Boss. “The first is that my absence might affect the circulation of your papers. The second is that it might not.”
The politics of the New York Daily News are annoying here, too.
But no one’s rooting harder for that “hometown paper” to survive.