The road to Hebron or the road to perdition? Tabloids do their 'things'
Today's tabloids, Sept. 1, 2010.
8:39 am Sep. 1, 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?
The New York Post: One of the obscure things about the old New York Sun, to non-New Yorkers at any rate, was the mix of stories on the front page: A painting or sculpture was often pictured with a caption, referring readers to the paper's arts section, popular with Manhattan elites. The rest of the paper's front page tended to be a mix of news from the Middle East and from city agencies and political campaigns. Rupert Murdoch is said to have been a great fan of the paper's mix of coverage, and it dovetails well with his sense of New York as a city geographically located between Europe and America in its news sensibilities.
"It's one of those days they're doing their Israel thing," my co-editor Josh Benson said this morning, which is shorthand for running the type of story that almost every other American newspaper would play on the inside but which the Post periodically puts on the wood, as if to remind the Israel-watchers of New York how hard they try to serve an important, if not massive, New York demographic. "PEACE, HAMAS STYLE" reads the main hed, referring to an ambush attack on a West Bank highway leading into Hebron in which a group of Hamas thugs subdued a Subaru full of women settlers with gunfire, then approached it and sprayed bullets into the car. The attack makes the front today in part because it's the ghastliest Hamas attack in some time, and in part because it was clearly meant to play into the peace talks starting with a dinner tonight in Washington, D.C. Both Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the connection quickly enough: while Netanyahu said that terror would not determine the borders of Israel, an aide also said that he would point to the attack in conversations with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to indicate that no slowdown in the fight against Hamas should be tolerated; Hamas leaders said the attack demonstrated that negotiators attending the conference on behalf of Palestine had no mandate.
While the Post is hardly a go-to player in the American news-media on foreign affairs, on the topic of Israel it often makes up for it by writing the story from an inside point of view: that is, it's easy to imagine the text of this article appearing in a tabloid in Israel or England. The text of the story is not written to invite New Yorkers who weren't already looking for the story or don't already understand the basics of the conflict to engage with it. But that's not the point: It's not a bad demographic for the paper, and serving this audience sometimes might just be the kind of reminder that the Post needs to remain Manhattan Island's tabloid of choice.
Incidentally, a few friends of mine have remarked that though the U.S. Open happens at the same time each year, some years the week before Labor Day feels particularly dead. U.S. Open fever is hardly at a fever pitch this year; even the Post can only muster "Hot stuff at Open: SEE SPORTS." OK, I won't!
Daily News: It's not that the story on the front of the News today might not also have been a Post cover: A young man with a love of musicals and a family on Staten Island leapt from a 39th-floor window on the Upper West Side and survived with only broken legs after his fall was broken by a parked car. He fell through the back windshield and into the trunk and backseat area of the car; the detail that his Keds were blown off his feet in the feet-first landing is particularly typical. (I don't myself understand how this can happen, but "strange but true" is a special subcategory of this kind of story.) As it happens this was a suicide attempt; also reference is made to the kid's Facebook page, which has a few antisocial moments ("interests" include "making fun of people," according to the News). But the focus of the story is not the suicide attempt but the amazing survival of the kid, which the owner of the ruined car attributed to a set of crystal rosary beads adorning the rear-view mirror. (He kissed them for the benefit of a reporter, and probably to the detriment of serious Catholics citywide.) The headline is just "WOW!", because the photo of the kid crushed into the back of this red car is an exclusive, and while grainy and cropped-up, a white circle around the kid's face gives a pretty quick read of what the "WOW" is for.
There's also a because-we-must blue stripe across the top of the page that refers elliptically to the president's declaration of the end of the U.S. operation in Iraq: "BAM: ECON NEXT FRONT." Huh?
Observations: It's difficult on a day like today, when the News is doing its local "news of the weird" thing and the Post is doing its "news from Hebron" thing, each relatively well, to determine a victor without rendering a verdict on the overall complexion of their respective target readership. Competing for eyeballs on the newsstand, however, is about converting people. And a "WOW" suicide survival story is a lot more accessible. What's more, while "WOW" is dull as dishwater as a main hed, "PEACE, HAMAS STYLE" is just a headscratcher. Granted a deck allows the Post to explain that "Terror fiends kill 4 Israelis on the eve of DC talks," but why the reference to Divorce, Italian Style? And the generic masked and armed "Hamas" guy on the lower left is just abstract. I'm surprised that the celebration that drew thousands of Hamas supporters after the attack was not the main image, given the Post's position on Hamas, which is to make sure regular Americans understand it is a terror outfit and not an analogue even to the old P.L.O. The secondary stories on both front pages are just a wash—pointless. Finally, it's a matter of salesmanship, and there, both kind of flubbed it, except the News has an easier story to sell.
Winner: Daily News.
