Jiggle joints and jihads: the tabloids get Important
Today's front pages, Sept. 2, 2010.
9:54 am Sep. 2, 20102
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: On the days when a newspaper uses its front page to speak directly to world leaders, it's a statement: not just about the newspaper's opinion on something happening in the news, but about the paper's mandate with its readers, and its influence over international politics.
The politics of News Corp., however, have always been changeable. As a giant corporation with stakes in the media business all over the world, it is of course an organization tilted toward government appeasement of big business, which in American terms would often seem to place it firmly on the right side of the aisle.
As a media organization with fish to fry with vastly different constituencies all over the world—and, finally, as an organization of news organizations each with stories to tell to a specific audience—the picture changes a bit with each election cycle, and gets more unpredictable the lower the altitude of the organization doing the talking.
We talked a bit yesterday about the Post's constituency of New Yorkers with special interest in the conflicts of the Middle East: American Jews who watch Israel closely; right-wingers looking for flashpoints in their continuing narrative of a macro-conflict between Islamic nations and the West; left-wingers who object to the state of Israel altogether; and many in between. It's not "HEADLESS BODY* IN TOPLESS BAR," but it still often works well for the Post.
Today's cover—picturing President Barack Obama with leaders in the talks about a settlement between Palestinians and Israel that begin today in Washington—are pictured under knock-out up-and-down type that reads, "Now EARN that Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. President." Three pages are indicated, but it's the editorial that explains the paper's institutional position. And it's very confusing.
The main story is mostly a readout of statements made by the president, by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. One billboard graph reads: "The kickoff of the peace talks presents Obama with a golden opportunity to prove to the many critics of his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize that he is worthy of the honor." It's a strange bit of editorializing in the middle of a straight news piece. First of all, the paper has never placed much stock in the Nobels, reflecting as they do the positions of right-thinking Europeans and generally accompanied by bromides about peace that the paper routinely dismisses as sentimental and naive nonsense. But after this little sally, there is little more to indicate in the piece that the Nobel figures very strongly in the paper's reportage from the talks.
More confusingly, the paper editorializes that, essentially, these talks are a hopeless sham unless Hamas and Iran can be subdued, and Abbas positioned to accept a settlement that is likely to be less remunerative to Palestinian interests than many that were previously rejected.
"'This moment of opportunity may not soon come again,' President Obama offered yesterday. But what opportunity might that be?" the editorial board writes. So, that golden opportunity that's on the cover?
In general, the influence of the media on the Obama White House has been hard to measure, two years into Obama's term. Whether statements out of the White House press office berating other News Corp. properties like Fox News are a sign that Rupert Murdoch is getting under their skin or not is probably up for debate. But The New York Post is likely not even on the radar. Today is about paying lip service to the "golden opportunity" on the cover, and reminding New York constituents that the Post is still with them: Carrot time is over for the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and the government of Iran; it's stick time. The opportunity won't crop up in the Little Family Dining Room of the White House, but in the State Department and, possibly, the Department of Defense.
Daily News: Meanwhile, the News tries to flex its political muscle in a different way: To make Charlie Rangel's challenger for a seat in the House, Adam Clayton Powell IV, return somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000 in donations to Gus Drakopoulos, a former Wall Streeter banned from securities after a finding he'd engaged in fraud, who now owns Sin City, a strip club in the Bronx. Powell talks a lot in the piece: He was happy to take money from the owner of a strip joint—"I'm not Charlie Rangel. I don't have a million dollars in my reelection campaign," he said—but not happy to take money from a Wall Street grifter.
"What he owns, if it's legal, I can look the other way. What you are telling me is illegal, and I have a problem with that," he said. And: "I'm going to return the money. I want no part of anybody like that." Problem solved! But, a few things here: One, the News is writing about a strip joint. Two, the story is an "exclusive." (In the sense at least, that it was a challenge from a News reporter that prompted the return of the money, so the story only exists on his tape recorder.) Speaking of golden opportunities: Above a red-lit photo of a woman in high pink patent-leather boots and red fishnets that cuts off at the thighs, the main hed reads "SIN PAYS." Bullet points! "Bronx strip-joint big gives cash to Rangel foe" and "Powell took the dough from Sin City owner, but now says he returned it."
Oh, "HERE COMES EARL!" I won't look but it's probably about emergency bags and interviews with Home Depot clerks about how people are "stocking up." And, there are some "CELEB FASHIONS" that even a Daily News reader can afford! That is, until Diane von Furstenberg wins a lawsuit against Forever 21.
Observations: So who wins? The paper that aims low and succeeds at changing politics that don't matter much, or aims high and not only will fail but suggests that any action taken in these Mideast peace talks is futile? The paper that puts legs in fishnets on its cover or spouts important-sounding directives about world peace? We've promised no draws here so (flips coin):
Winner: Heads. The New York Post.
* PROPS TO @beacongal for correcting my horrendous mistake on that world-famous Post wood: I had it as "HEADLESS WOMAN ..." in this post before.
For what it's worth, I do not find the Post's position on the Middle East peace talks confusing at all - one doesn't negotiate with terrorists. What's more, I'm oddly sympathetic with their skepticism with regard to this tired ceremony that every American president must somehow slog through. The Post's cover is oddly nuanced for the paper, I think it's the most words that have appeared in a headline for some time. But the Post is not where I typically turn for nuance, or foreign policy for that matter.
On the other hand, the News cover is a story that any cub reporter would have beaten into a wood on a Sunday at the Post, if not for the unrelenting war on Rangel. The photo choice on the News is baffling however - are gogo boots now sinful? Could they not have found a way to wedge some T&A into the story, or at least the lead photo?
I feel this is the case of both tabloids attempting something neither does well - foreign policy and baroque negotiations in the case of the Post, and feigned outrage with a soupcon of salaciousness in the case of the News. Both fail.
"On the days when a newspaper uses its front page to speak directly to world leaders..."
OK, I agree with this. But not with the paper we're talking about here. What world leader wakes up and calls to his butler, "Michael, bring me my New York Post." Not one. Maybe (MAYBE) Michael Bloomberg if you count him as a world leader.
I think the NYDN wins today for going hard local and bringing us an eye-level stage view. And also say, "Hey pal, how bout that weather?"
And on days when there's no clear winner, I think the NYDN should get it automatically, because they've been sucking so many eggs this summer, they're winners any day they're competitive.