The world of print publications is shrinking fast now.
Yesterday, the New York Daily News laid off whoever was left among its star writers and reporters. Among them: David Hinckley, Jim Farber, Bill Madden. Mike Lupica apparently will be gone before the end of the year. Filip Bondy and Hank Gola are also gone.
At this point, there is no Daily News without these guys. But Mort Zuckerman can’t find a buyer for the paper. The rumor is he’s going to cut the print editions until it’s almost all on the web. The News was famous for photographs, but their most famous picture taker– the legendary Richard Corkery– is long gone.
Last week, the editor in chief, Colin Myler, was sacked as well.
I’m not even sure where the Daily News offices are anymore. In its heyday the paper was on East 42nd St. in a building likened to the Daily Planet of “Superman” fame. The lobby there was a work of art. Then Zuckerman moved the paper to far west 33rd Street in an anonymous slab of concrete. For all I know, they’re in Hoboken now.
Meanwhile, the death of Newsday seems imminent. It was sold this week by Cablevision to a French company. AM New York may have been sold with it, but no one’s mentioned it. All the people who remain at these papers labor out of love at this point. They’ve been whittled to nothing.
In the the late 80s, Newsday–which serves Long Island– moved into Manhattan for a short glorious run. Don Forst made New York Newsday a must-read. Now things are so bad that their stories are behind a paywall. When they reported the Cablevision sale this week, you had to pay to read about Newsday’s fate. I’m sure few did.
This will be Zuckerman’s legacy in journalist. He bought the Atlantic Monthly, the Atlantic Monthly Press, US News an World Report and the Daily News to change his standing from Canadian realtor to international world pundit. In 30 years all the publications were either sold off (Atlantic) or destroyed (all the others).
Congratulations.
