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New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman is driven crazy by the fact that out on the streets, it’s the New York Post - a tabloid with half the ads, a “hemorrhaging balance sheet,” and “questionable journalistic standards” - that people talk about, according to the New York Times. In the last two years, The Daily News lost 40,000 in daily circulation while The New York Post gained 20,000.
The News remains New York’s hometown favorite, but the Post is gaining - in part, Zuckerman feels, because of the Post’s lower standards. “The Daily News is not a pure tab. I have refused to take it downmarket and become a tab in the sense of a lot of sexual exploitation or exploitation of violence,” he told the Times. “We are trying to be serious about being a centrist paper, both in terms of the editorial pages and the way we cover the news.”
The Times calls that “seriousness” into question, pointing out last week’s story on a slain John Jay College graduate student that included tabloid-like phrases such as “mummy vic” and “city beauty slain by beast.”
The Daily News, which has had three editors in as many years, will see Zuckerman’s 8-year-old daughter as publisher some day, if the newspaperman has his way. In the meantime, The Daily News and The Post will continue to duke it out, according to newspaper analyst John Morton. “A head-to-head between tabloids is as New York as cheesecake. Fortunately we have two owners who are willing to sink their money into it,” he told the Times.
All sectors of the media business will suffer from the weakened economy in 2008 and 2009, with a slump in local advertising particularly hurting newspapers and local TV, according to a new projection from Goldman Sachs.
Broadcast nets will experience…
The New York Times is shuttering its International Herald Tribune site; NYTimes.com will soon host the international news normally reserved for its sister website.
The move is not about cost savings, but rather about growth, NYTimes.com general manager Vivian Schiller…
Unilever’s Vaseline set forth on an unusual research project in a small town in Alaska. Setting up a storefront, the company began giving away free bottles of lotion and asking recipients to name the person who had recommended they come…
Meet the Press, the show hosted by Tim Russert for 17 years before his death last June, is beginning to slip in ratings.
Last month, CBS’s Face the Nation pulled ahead of Meet the Press for the first time in two…
Bloggers collectively create nearly one million blog posts each day, and half of bloggers believe blogs will be a primary source of news and entertainment in the next five years, according to Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report, MarketingCharts writes.…
Wal-Mart and Costco reported same-store gains in September, with sales rising 2.4% and 9% respectively. Sales at Target stores open at least a year fell 3%, writes Retailer Daily.
Below, fiscal results from the discount retail giants:
Sales of food and…
