Written by Rick Ackerman, Rick’s Picks
NYC Scandal Sheet Shrinks to Survive
The New York Daily News isn’t folding, not quite yet, but it put one foot in the grave Monday with the announcement that half of the editorial staff has been laid off.
Speaking as a former newspaper editor myself, what I’ll miss most when the paper eventually phases out newsprint editions is the outrageous headlines on the cover page. Click here for a collection of some of the best. The trick for tabloid copy editors is to come up with grabby headlines that fit in a space often no more than five or six letters wide. Often, that leaves only expletives (such as shown below) to trumpet the stories inside.
The Daily News always put the working man first, and its editorial board was no friend of Trump’s, to put it mildly. Relative to other tabloids, the News‘ daily fare has never been as salacious as Fleet Street’s scandal sheets, nor as outrageous as grocery-store-checkout magazines.
Among those laid off was the editor-in-chief, Jim Rich who tweeted:
“If you hate democracy and think local governments should operate unchecked and in the dark, “then today is a good day for you.”
Sadly, this is true, although it is predictable that newspapers will have a digital resurgence at some point. Why do I say that? Simply because even if brick-and-mortar newspapers are dying in droves, Americans’ appetite for news, particularly local stories, remains insatiable.
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