New York Post

The New York Post is one of the oldest newspapers published in the United States. It is owned by Australian-born billionaire Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and is the 12th largest newspaper (in terms of circulation) in the United States. Its editorial offices are located at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, in Manhattan.

Early history

The paper was founded by Alexander Hamilton and a group of investors for $10,000 in the autumn of 1801 as the New-York Evening Post, a broadsheet quite unlike today's tabloid. Hamilton's co-investors included other members of the Federalist Party such as John Jay, Oliver Wolcott and Rufus King who were dismayed by the election of Thomas Jefferson and the rise in popularity of the Democratic-Republican Party. The meeting at which Hamilton first recruited investors for the new paper took place in the country weekend villa that is now Gracie Mansion. Hamilton chose for his first editor William Coleman, but the most famous 19th-century Evening Post editor was William Cullen Bryant, a strong Abolitionist. In 1881 Henry Villard took control of the Evening Post, which in 1897 passed to the management of his son, Oswald Garrison Villard, a founding member of both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1933 the Post briefly changed to a conservative tabloid format. Dorothy Schiff purchased the paper in 1939 and her second editor (and husband) Ted Thackrey turned it into a pure tabloid format in 1942. In 1976 the Post was bought by Rupert Murdoch.

The Murdoch years

While in the past the newspaper had been a long-established politically liberal stalwart, in recent years the paper has adopted a conservative slant, reflecting Murdoch's politics. Murdoch imported the sensationlist "tabloid journalism" style of his British papers such as the The Sun - typified by the Post's famous April 15, 1983 headline: HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR and even rerunning The Sun's famous GOTCHA headline, this time in regards to the murder of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi instead of the Falklands War.

Due to the institution of federal regulations limiting cross media ownership, Murdoch was forced to sell the paper in 1988 to Peter S. Kalikow, a real estate magnate. When Kalikow declared bankruptcy in 1993, the paper was temporarily managed by Steven Hoffenberg, a financier who pled guilty to securities fraud; and, for two weeks, by Abe Hirschfeld,who made his fortune building parking garages. The Post was repurchased in 1993 by Murdoch's News Corporation, which was granted a permanent waiver by Congress from the cross-ownership rules that had forced him to sell the paper five years earlier. Under Murdoch's direction, the paper has affected a populist conservative editorial viewpoint.

Highlights

The paper is well known for its sports section, which has been praised for its comprehensiveness; it begins on the back page, and among other coverage, contains columns about sports in the media by Phil Mushnick.

The New York Post is also well known for its gossip columnists Liz Smith and Cindy Adams. The best known gossip section is 'Page Six', edited by Richard Johnson. It is reported that "Page Six" is the first thing many celebrities turn to each morning. Feb. 2006 saw the debut of Page Six: the magazine, edited by Jared Paul Stern, which was distributed free inside the paper.

Sales

In recent decades, the daily circulation of the Post slumped from 700,000 in the late 1960s to approximately 418,000. A resurgence in the last five years boosted circulation 49% to 686,207, achieved partly by lowering the price from 50 to 25 cents. Three of every four Post readers read another paper as well. The Post sold 753,116 column inches of display ads in 2004, only about 45% as much as was run in the New York Daily News.

News Corp. does not release figures, but outsiders estimate the newspaper has been losing $15-30 million a year, and some speculate Murdoch operates the paper at a loss because of the political influence the newspaper affords him. Industry experts suggest that the Post cannot become profitable as long as the competing Daily News survives, and he may be trying to force that paper to fold or sell out. ^*

Criticisms

Murdoch's Post has been criticized from the beginning for its lurid headlines, sensationalism, and blatant advocacy. In 1980, the Columbia Journalism Review asserted that "the New York Post is no longer merely a journalistic problem. It is a social problem - a force for evil."Columbia Journalism Review, volume 18 number 5 (Jan/Feb 1980), page 22-23.

Critics feel that the Post allows its editorial positions to shape its story selection and news coverage. But as the Post executive editor, Steven D. Cuozzo, sees it, it was the Post that "broke the elitist media stranglehold on the national agenda." Post supporters cite a series of recent scandals at the supposedly-reputable broadsheet New York Times as proof that this problem is scarcely unique to the Post.

According to a survey conducted by Pace University in 2004, the New York Post was rated the least credible major news outlet in New York, and the only news outlet to receive more responses calling it "not credible" than credible (44% not credible to 39% credible). ^*

There have been numerous controversies surrounding the Post, often due to their use of language that some feel is overtly racist or ethnically insensitive. Most recently, for example, several Asian-American advocacy groups protested the use of the headline "Wok This Way" for an article about President Bush's meeting with the president of the People's Republic China. ^*

Trivia

The New York Post, established 1801, describes itself as the nation's oldest continuously published daily newspaper. The Hartford Courant, which describes itself as the nation's oldest continuously published newspaper, was founded in 1764 as a semi-weekly paper; it didn't begin publishing daily until 1836. The New Hampshire Gazette, which has trademarked its claim of being The Nation's Oldest Newspaper, was founded in 1756.
When Rupert Murdoch once asked the chairman of Bloomingdale's why he wasn't buying ads in the Post, he was allegedly told "because, dear Rupert, your readers are my shoplifters." ^* (This anecdote has also been told about other publications and the Bloomingdale's chairman, Marvin Traub, has denied ever saying this about the "Post.")
The Public Enemy song "A Letter to the New York Post" is a complaint about what they believed to be negative and inaccurate coverage the group received from the paper.

Fictional references

In the Spider-Man films, the Daily Bugle appears to be based on the Post. The Post explicitly takes the place of the Bugle in the Daredevil film.
The New York Post is a common target of jokes on the television show Law & Order, often seen at the end of an episode with a ridiculous headline relating to the episode's case, occasionally alongside a copy of the New York Times, which has a more reasonable headline. Copies of the fictional New York Ledger, which appears very similar to the Post, have also appeared on Law & Order.
In the spy farce film Top Secret!, one of the villain's henchmen is introduced as "Klaus . . . a moron, who knows only what he reads in the New York Post." The actor, a large man with a blank, rather unintelligent looking expression on his face, is holding a copy of the New York Post as this is said.
The New New York Post has occasionally appeared in Futurama.
In October 1984, a parody called "The Post New York Post" was published, ostensibly the issue from the day after the start of World War III. The front-page headline was "KABOOM!" The subhead read, "Michael Jackson, 80 million others dead."

External links

New York Post Online official site

References

The Post's New York : Celebrating 200 Years of New York City As Seen Through the Pages and Pictures of the New York Post, 2001