Death in the Afternoon

America's Newspaper Giants Struggle for Survival

Andrews, McMeel and Parker, 1984.

Preface

• industrial decline: no longer workers going home in the afternoon
• increasing service sector: workers go home in evening
• evening news on television
• suburbanization: distributing papers to far flung places in peak traffic
• timing: morning papers have all night to go over whole days events, while afternoon papers go over what happened yesterday and this morning.
• class: advertisers going for upper class Times readers.

CH 1 A Bigger Slice of the Brie

p2. Newspapers were having a harder and harder time making a profit, so mergers were rampant. In 1966, many papers which had already merged went through a massive consolidation in which Hearst's Journal- American and Scripps' - Howard's World-Telegram & Sun combined with the Herald-Tribune to become World Journal Tribune dubbed the Widget.

pp4-5. Near the end of her tenure, many people proposed buying it from her, but she was not interested. By the time she was ready to sell, in 1976, Rupert Murdoch was the only one looking to buy. Murdoch was a big publisher in Australia, while in the United States he owned the National Star, now known as the Star.

p8. Murdoch bought the Village Voice, New York Magazine, and New West shortly after purchasing the Post.

p13. He then bought the subscription list of the Queens based Long Island Press when it was going out of business in 1977.

pp13-15. There was a strike in 1978 against all the city's major papers, then the Post, Daily News and Times. Murdoch was put in charge of joint negotiations for all the papers. He settled the Post's dispute on the side and left the other two papers on strike. Murdoch then scooped up many of their advertisers.

p17. 1919: Capt. Joseph Patterson formed the Daily News with the help of his cousin Colnel Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune. McCormick also helped Patterson's daughter, Alecia, found Newsday. 1970: Newsday sold to Times-Mirror based in Los Angeles.

CH 2 Death Moves to the Morning

• Warner Communications
• John Dyson: Chair, NY Power Authority [& Deputy Mayor for Giuliani].
• Arthur Levitt: Chair, American Stock Exchange.
• Donald Trump: Real estate magnate.
• Mortimer Zuckerman: Real estate magnate and Atlantic Monthly
• Laurene and Robert Tisch: Lowes Corp, [CBS]
• Joe Albritton: Banker and newspaper publisher from

No buyers could pass Tribune and/or union muster, but Albritton came close. He demanded major union concessions that they were unwilling to do. In 1983, Tribune realized that closing it down would have tremendous costs due to severance pay arrangements already in the union contracts. Tribune decided to continue publishing the News if they could obtain major layoffs and early retirement from the unions. The unions figured it was their only hope at keeping their jobs, so relented. In return, Tribune planned to give the employees 24% of all profits over 6%.

[Subsequent to this book's publication, the News was sold to Mortimer Zuckerman.]

Herald (1899) ----------.
               |-- (1934) Herald Tribune (1950) -------.
Daily Tribune (1902) ---'                         |
                                        |
                                        |-- (1966) World Journal Tribune
(1933) Sun (1948) ------.                         |
               |-- (1950) World Telegram and Sun (1950)'
               |
               `-------------------------------.
(1922) World (1926) ----.                    |
               |-- (1931) World Telegram (1947)'
Telegram ? -------------'

Frederick Shaw. The History of the New York City Legislature, pp 11, 68, 72, 91, 101, 138, 206, 222, 227, 248
Benjaminson p 2.