To: Mort Zuckerman:
Re: America's most important tabloid

Dear Mort, How are you? Nervous, I gather. Me too. Don't you just hate that Rupert Murdoch and his New York Post? He starts a Sunday edition and undercuts the price of your Daily News. You drop to a dollar; he drops to a quarter. A quarter. Then when his circulation rises and yours slips, he trumpets this on page three of his paper -- post delivers sunday punch to reeling news -- without so much as a mention of the price war. As they say in Australia, that's chutzpah. Your new editorial czar as of January, Harry Evans, is claiming he has a certain respect for Rupert, his new tabloid rival, even though Harry worked for Rupe as editor of The Times of London in 1981-82, was bled dry and then fired. When The Guardian of Britain asked Evans, shortly after you hired him, about his feelings for Murdoch, Evans remarked that the most interesting character in Paradise Lost is Lucifer.

About this Evans thing: I hope it's not a sign of panic. First you hire Pete Hamill, to the applause of the journalistic world. He cuts back on gossip and celebrity and tries mightily to boost the paper's attraction for women and for immigrants, who make up so much of New York's population. He talks excitedly about cooking up "God's paper." But he gets just eight months before you lose faith.

 Next, in November, you install Debby Krenek, a well-liked insider at the News and the first woman ever to run it. She is clearly trying for tasty stories that people talk about and savor.

***

The wedding-that-wasn't is an example. On November 23 The New York Times reports that Nicole Contos and Tasos Michael "were married yesterday," in the stately Greek Orthodox Archdiocesan Cathedral in Manhattan. Not so, however. As your Daily News reports the following day, the groom, a London attorney, gets iced feet, leaving the bride, a kindergarten teacher, alone at the altar in her cream Victorian wedding dress from Saks. She cries. Then she marches into the Essex House and urges 250 guests to go ahead and party. The band breaks into "I Will Survive."

 Great story. But all of pages one, two, and three? (Page four was devoted to the high school and college years of Jerry Seinfeld.) Next day we find that the groom has taken the honeymoon by himself -- his cold heart thaws in tahiti -- and this gets pages one, four, and five (with a nice shot of the four-carat engagement ring). By Saturday the News has the groom's picture, so again it's page one: meet the jerk. Mort, how will you cover World War III?

A sense of proportion is a problem all over the media. In a louder, faster world it seems increasingly difficult to come up with a menu that is both delicious and nutritious. And it's a special problem for you, Mort. I have this fear that, in your battle with the Post, you'll be tempted to ape it.

I'm no stick-in-the-mud. I want to know something about Marv's wig. But I don't want pages one, two, and three sacrificed to Marv's interview with Barbara, as the News did on November 7 (Q: Is wearing women's underwear part of your turn-on? A: No, not at all.). Or take your October 17 edition. Please. The excerpt from Donald Trump's latest piece of literature, with the page-one headline: i wish i had dated di. Jeez, Mort. After a front page like that, everything inside your paper gets diminished. All the ten-dollar headlines. All the hard reporting, of which the News has plenty. All the excellent columns, an arena where the News shines so very brightly.

 The Trump thing was the polar opposite of Krenek's best stuff, like the exposŽ of the transit authority's hidden surplus, the successful crusade to cut subway and bus fares. At its best, the Daily News is a solid meal in a hungry city. We need a paper that is comfortable with plumbers and secretaries and cops. Great as it is, the Times often sees the city as if through the window of a fine restaurant. The News -- not the Post -- is the one I see most in my focus group, the subway. But if you fail to provide enough that is serious for these underground strivers you may not, in the end, be taken seriously.

***

Now comes Harry Evans, and Mort, I honestly don't know whether to be more or less nervous. He'll be czar over your other publications, U.S. News and TheAtlantic Monthly, too, but he seems most excited about a return to newspapers. His most recent job was publisher at Random House, and he's a Brit who hangs around with gliterati. Maybe you're casting against type? But then, on the other hand, he's spent thirty-nine years in newsrooms, fourteen of them as editor of London's Sunday Times, where he had a taste for big-league investigative stuff.

 Evans explained his new role at the News this way to The Guardian: "What was it Bagehot said about the role of the monarch? To advise, to warn, and to encourage. That's how I shall try to act." Does Krenek like advice from kings?

Well, I hope so. I hope this chemistry works. As you know too well, Mort, Rupe's Post gets a lot of attention from press types because it puts so much energy into media coverage and gossip. He's no dummy. The Post has built its business coverage, too, and added intriguing conservative commentary on its op-ed page. It looks at home next to a lunch box though it's increasingly a second read for the Wall Street set. But it gives tabloids a bad name, Mort. So heavy on celebs and royals and generally light on anything else, and such a weapon for Rupe to bash his business rivals and the politicians he doesn't like. So I'm for the News, Mort, and for you and Debby and Harry, whichever of you is chief cook and bottle washer.

 I read where you were a guest of the White House, at the state dinner for Chinese president Jiang Zemin. How was that chilled lobster with corn-leek relish? The pepper-crusted Oregon beef? I wish you many more such meals. Just don't try to feed the rest of us bread and circuses.

 Sincerely,
Mike

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