NY papers vanish with readers
NEW YORK: Kenny Hospot is in some ways a typical reader of The Daily News. He’s a construction worker from Queens who’s lived in the city most of his life. He always liked reading the comics and the horoscope in The News.
How long since he last bought a copy of the paper? Mr Hospot laughed. “I would say like 15 years.”
Kamel Brown is another archetypal customer for New York’s Hometown Newspaper, as The Daily News styles itself. He’s a maintenance worker for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He’s 55 years old. He grew up buying the paper for his grandmother in Brooklyn. “When she was finished reading it, I’d pick it up, flip back and start with the sports,” Mr Brown said.
He doesn’t remember the last time he bought it. When he paged through a copy at a friend’s home this past week, he was unimpressed.
Tristan Dominguez, on the other hand, is still a big Daily News fan. “It’s the only place you see anything local,” Mr Dominguez said at a bodega in Washington Heights, where a stack of papers sat behind the counter.
He reads the paper mostly online and through Twitter.
All of this helps explain why there was an air of inevitability about the news on Monday that the organisation was laying off half its editorial staff.
Once upon a time, The Daily News sold more than 2 million papers a day. Now its circulation is only about a tenth of that, and the paper’s non-hometown owner, the Chicago-based media company Tronc, which bought the paper in 2017, does not have the patience for non-profitability that the prior owner, Mort Zuckerman, did.
At a cultural moment when the very idea of New York City as a hometown is quickly dissolving, and when most people get their news from some sort of glowing screen, the thirst for local ink is not what it used to be.
And those who do crave hard-hitting coverage that holds officials accountable for the state of the city were not pleased to hear about the layoffs.
“You need those old-school people because they know what they’re doing,” Rosanne Nunziata, a manager at the New Apollo Diner in downtown Brooklyn, said of The Daily News’ staff of veteran shoeleather reporters, many of whom are now pounding the pavement in search of employment. “They know how to sneak in and get their stories, and know how to get witnesses to talk and do their thing.”
The New York Post, The Daily News’ longtime rival for tabloid dominance, has seen its circulation plummet, too. Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns The Post, has long tolerated the paper’s unprofitability.
There are, of course, still people who treasure the solidity of newsprint. Some of them are even young. Ella Noman, 25, who works in a flower shop near the 30th Avenue subway station in the Astoria neighbourhood of Queens, said she read the store’s copy of The Daily News every day.
“Not everything comes in the internet,” Ms Noman said. “It goes really fast, and I can’t find much detail.”
Mr Brown, the MTA maintenance worker, said he had noticed The News shift focus to its online content, which is unapologetically heavy on sensational outof-town news.
But Mr Brown said he would not be buying the paper anytime soon.
“With these recent cuts,” he asked, “is it really a newspaper any more?”