Capital New York

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: The first thing you see when you look at today's Post on the newsstand is the heavy, black type reading "NEAT TRICK." It is a neat trick! First of all, a story with little in the way of photographic visual appeal—unfortunately this story subject, who describes rather prolifically her life of stripping and prostitution on the Web, is not as free with photos of herself as was Sexy Spy Anna Chapman—nevertheless has the legs (get it?) to lead the page with this heavy type. And the "neat trick" pun is perfect Post: clipped and Germanic, two words that say it all. The "trick" referred to here is erstwhile-cover-star Melissa Petro's snagging "tenure at a Bronx elementary school—even as she burned up the Internet with blogs about her notorious past." It's pretty juicy! Until you read the article.

It seems that the granting of tenure happened "without even a cursory background check," mostly because tenure requires performance reviews, not background checks. And Mike Bloomberg, who just yesterday delivered a tough speech about performance reviews and tenure in the city's schools, is not apparently interested in initiating them. Left out of the story is whether Petro is a good teacher—something the Post implies no parent could possibly believe given her past. "Parents were outraged," the Post declares. Well, Matilda Wilson, whose son is in the second grade at Petro's school, qualifies as one parent, and she's quoted here. Can we get a second, so that the declaration is at least technically demonstrably true? Still, adding to the appeal of the main hed is the dek, "Hooker teacher tenure." There isn't a simpler sale than that.

The thing is, the picture of Petro is a little postage stamp (though granted Petro is wearing a coquettish side-look). Photographic appeal has to come from somewhere else, and not apparently from the chef who committed suicide Friday by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. Yesterday, Joseph Cerniglia chewed up the wood because back in 2007 he was a reality-TV star in bullying chef-corrector Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares" show, in which Ramsay scares restaurateurs straight and tries to reorganize their failing businesses.

Today, Cerniglia is silhouetted pretty small in a dark-blue box near the top of the page, looking good-natured and Jerseyish with a toothy smile, ballcap and 'stache. "Tragic chef's secret fling" reads the headline. It seems to suggest that the guy had family problems—which might be a better explanation for his suicide than the tough love of Gordon Ramsay three years ago. So the contradiction of yesterday's suggestion—that Ramsay's bullying and Cerniglia's suicide might have been related—is the very thing that will make readers turn to the inside story today. (Spoiler: It wasn't a "secret fling" at all, except from the Post reporters on yesterday's story. Cerniglia was separated from his wife and was dating his pastry chef, "the striking brunette cannoli-stuffer [Jessica] Marotta, 27." Cannoli-stuffer? The metaphor would be tasteless if inspection didn't render it nonsensical. Finish your breakfast first. Anyway, it all seems very much on the up-and-up, with Marotta's mother giving an interview, and the cannoli-stuffer spending last evening with Cerniglia's mother to share the grief. End spoiler.)

So where will the Post get its Big Picture today, to avoid looking like a web page with lots of stories and tiny pictures? Thanks, Yankees, for providing the sort of "boys gone wild" photo you get from locker-room champagne antics. The strip along the left margin, the traditional spot for selling the paper on a photo or famous face, is cut out from last night's celebration of the Yankees' clinching a spot in the playoffs. Nick Swisher (we think) in goggles and soaking-wet muscle-T, wearing a gape the likes of which we haven't seen since the old Newport cigarette ad campaigns, about to shoot champagne out of the bottle. Alive with pleasure!

Daily News: Phew! If your brow is sweating you might want to pick up a copy of today's News to sop it up with. If you were Nick Swisher and you had a series of photos of your locker-room champagne bash after your team secured a spot in the playoffs, the News photo is the one you'd post to Facebook after your mother signed up. It's cheerful enough in its way, but it's also posed. How many pictures did the News have to choose from? With the row of four players and foam flying everywhere, they look like weather reporters in a group picture taken off Cape Hatteras. And since the News takes up most of the wood with the story, they've got some space for a real headline. Instead they chose "FINALLY IN!" It may as well have said "THE YANKEES ARE IN THE PLAYOFFS." (Wait, it does! The dek reads: "Yanks top Jays, clinch playoff spot.") By putting this story in the first position, the News obliged itself to give us something more.

But the commitment to selling the story just wasn't there, and the page is cluttered with two red boxes at the bottom with knockout type: "Hevesi set to plead guilty in pay-for-play scandal" and "Bx. traffic agent beaten over ticket." We get three stories, all worthy, all somehow undersold.

Granted, the Hevesi story is deep and good. The tabloids should have had some fun with the speculation that Alan Hevesi planned to plead guilty because his sons were also targets in the investigation. It's politics, and it's a little granular, but with a little brio this could have been something; and since it's an important story, there'd at least have been some News-style dignity to the sale. The beating of the Bronx ticket agent is a horrifying story, the kind that arouses tabloid readers' best instincts: morbid curiosity mixed with outrage. But somehow the News manages to make it into something you now know you'll see inside, not something you buy the paper just to read, unless you're a Bx. traffic agent yourself.

Observations: I've said before that the Front is a sudden-death battle. Each day's Post goes head-to-head with the same day's News. This is the best News cover in some time—including some covers that have beaten the Post. But there's just too much energy on the Post front page to be beaten today. It's a clear-cut win.

Winner: The New York Post.

Tom McGeveran

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