Goodbye, Lebron! Goodbye, Anna Chapman! Now what?
Today's front pages, July 9, 2010.
8:46 am Jul. 9, 20101
Each day, the New York tabloids vie to sell readers at the newsstands on outrageous headlines, dramatic photography, and, occasionally, great reporting. Who is today's winner?
Daily News: If LeBron James had hoped that his 9 p.m. special on ESPN last night would actually break the news that he was going to join the Miami Heat, he was only partly mistaken. In the back pages, on the endless sportswriter Twitter feeds, the speculation had turned to near certainty fairly early in the day yesterday (if not weeks ago) that he was not coming to join the Dolans' Knicks. But front pages, headlines and "Film at Eleven" teasers are made of these moments, and no quantity of tweets from Frank Isola of the Daily News or cable sports-channel crawl-telegraphy could really have prevented his newspaper from pitching readers wood suggesting the decisive moment would be at 9:30 p.m. last night, when James finally said "Nope."
The News' sour-grapes headline today is therefore consistent with the reporting they've been getting in their back pages for ages now. It's always nice when the front page catches up with the spirit of the paper inside: you have the sense that, for a moment, the paper wants to actually sell to the readers they want to read their newspaper. But a broken clock is right twice a day, as they say. "Hey, we're New York, the greatest city in the world, so … WHO CARES?" reads today's wood. I won't remind the editorialists at the News how much they cared when they begged Dolan to "bring LeBron home." Then, having a winning basketball team at MSG seemed to be part of the very fabric of the city's reputation. Now … who cares whether the Knicks win?
But that's another thing, isn't it? Two seasons of unwatchable incompetence on the court were meant to make room for this one, big, giant off-court play for Knicks relevance. Is it really LeBron's fault that that irresponsible gamble didn't pay out? Paging: Amar'e Stoudemire.
That said, the News' inside coverage is gimlet-eyed, not providing lights for village torches or tissues for damp, embarrassed eyes, but delivering the backstory of the Dolans' failure.
And perhaps the real, genuine kiss-off comes from the fact that today, LeBron James did not have the wood all to himself, but shared it with … Anna Chapman! The flame-haired Trotskyite social-climber who loved princes is being shipped back to Moscow today, after a stopover in Vienna. Lay off the schlag, Anna: your looks may be all you've got going for you when you get back!
The New York Post: The Post never got as pathetic as the News about how badly the Knicks needed LeBron, so their kiss-off at least has the ring of truth. Though why he is "LeBUM" for choosing Miami over New York, instead of choosing pretty much anyplace over Cleveland, is anybody's guess. Remember, the Post is the winners' newspaper: the New York tabloid with the Yankee-fan mentality. For them, sentimentally, the failure is the Dolans'. But the elite newspaper that sells on populist rhetoric knows which days to burn bright on behalf of the fans. The report inside is full of LeBron hauteur: he's renting 25 rooms at a hotel in South Beach to celebrate! Can you believe him? And short on the details the Post would otherwise be best at: the negotiations, the money, the power moves. That's fine. We're sick of all that anyway. And of course the Post gives much more wood to their favorite "can we keep her?!" sexy spy. It's too bad they have to resort to the tired old "Russia with love" gimmick. (In New York Post, headline writes you!)
Observations: It's hard to compare two nearly identical covers. What differentiates them is really what the readers' attitude toward this whole LeBron boomlet was. Are they angry at LeBron or … angry at LeBron? Most New Yorkers, I suspect, are neither. They're angry at the Dolans, always. But that anger is now a bore.
Winner: LeBron James.
Post wins. Same message, but NYDN's is more sour grapes BUT MOST OF ALL because the Post had LeBron in a George Michael picture frame pose.