Bloomberg fights Queens school secretary for front page
Today's tabloids, August 25, 2010.
8:16 am Aug. 25, 2010
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: As a rule around here we're willing to crow like the Mayberry Sun when a local makes good in television or the movies. But it's a bit much to suggest that "N.Y. WILL OWN EMMY NIGHT" just because 30 Rock and Mad Men are up for some laurels. And that is what the News says today, expressing it with a silhouetted bust of Tina Fey, whose embossed image would probably be on the coin of Kaufman Astoria if they minted their own money. (They don't: in television, New York is a lot better at getting critical acclaim than ratings, and 30 Rock is no exception.) Mad Men isn't even filmed here. But where it gets really crazy is where a win for Glee is touted as raising the stakes for New York because some of the cast got its start on Broadway, or The Good Wife because the plot was ripped from the headlines about our former governor. Prepare, after flipping to the story for some parochial good cheer, to feel a little silly. After all, not even Woody Allen will film here anymore.
But that's not the main hed on the front of today's News. That honor belongs to Debbie Rizzo of Middle Village, in whose errors we are to bask today. It seems that Rizzo, a Queens high school secretary, spent as much as $6,000 of her school's money on what the News calls "lavish purchases" but in which the keen reader will detect a certain pathos: seven ceiling fans, flowers and balloons from Foxy Lady salon and florists, car service trips, a washer and dryer, five "Webkinz" toys, a Dell computer, a pink iPod docking station, a men's merino wool sweater and a wicker hamper. According to my quick math, Rizzo got some bargains! But the real energy of the story comes from the talk-show-ready way the school investigators roped in Rizzo's unnamed 14-year-old granddaughter to corroborate the charges; she was angry that Rizzo had stopped paying her cell phone bill, according to the News, though the girl's mother says the school investigators harangued her into testifying. Poor girl: on the front of today's paper she has to read "YUP, MY GRANNY'S A CROOK! Vengeful granddaughter turns in school secretary." It's a little fuzzy whether we are supposed to feel pity, and for whom, or outrage, and and at whom. Oh, a pointless "Get Revis" skybox sits on the upper left. "See Sports." Thanks, we knew that.
The New York Post: Nope, not a single story shared by the tabloids this morning. The Post instead decides to go big on Mayor Bloomberg's big Ramadan speech about the mosque at Gracie Mansion yesterday. "DO THE RITE THING" reads the main hed; "Defiant Mike stands firm on mosque." If this all seems a bit flattering given the Post's treatment of the mosque (i.e., suggesting the mosque is related to Hamas because a Hamas leader said he supported it; front-paging commentary suggesting that no imam can be trusted to honestly represent his own position on terrorism; generally giving comfort to mosque foes and obscuring the local angle), you should remember two things: 1) names make news; and 2) dramatic positions are generally either flattered or disgraced on the cover of the Post, the latter a sort of impossibility in the case of Mike Bloomberg. For the record: Even finding a different location for the mosque, given the turns the mudfight have taken over the last few weeks, would be giving in to the forces of religious intolerance and degrade the effort to fight terrorism with freedom, according to Bloomberg. Much of right-thinking New York is probably with him there, so a day of buttering us up is probably prudent for a paper that likes to walk the tightrope between demagoguery and the political fashion of the city elites.
More puzzling than the treatment of the Bloomberg speech is the Post's decision to buy a photo exclusive of Tiger Woods playing with his kids in a hotel corridor. They're grainy and hard to make out. Two pages of pictures and story are indicated inside. "Tiger & cubs at play," promises the knockout type. The fact that the Post is spending its second day on Tiger Woods makes me think I was missing something yesterday when I judged the story choice a dud for the wood: clearly the Post has a philosophy on Tiger Woods that I don't understand.
Observations: It seems strange that the News should pick this small-bore story, one in 10 million, to lead its front page, when Bloomberg's speech yesterday was so buzzy. I get the appeal of the relatable family crime story, but one has to wonder whether, on a dark, rainy and cold day, poor Debbie Rizzo isn't just too much of a downer to be allowed. The Tiger thing is no worse than the News' skyboxes, and Tiger's a better Q-rating than Tina Fey or Revis. Sometimes importance beats out mass-market strategy. The Post managed both today.
Winner: The New York Post.
