THE NEWSPAPERS OF NYC

Years ago in the mid-fifties, when the city of New York was busting out all over, and starting to change, so was I. Social change was in the works as well as in the city itself. I was learning quickly about the world, and none of it seemed good!

Of course in those days, people were well informed. TV was still in its infancy, but it was a conduit with a picture or film that one could now understand events as they occurred around the world or around the corner. Many people were still relying on radio as their source on news. But the strongest medium around was the newspaper, something everyone read in the morning before setting off on their day.

New York City was blessed with many things, an intricate and inexpensive subway system, with buses and taxies to supplement the riders needs, no one really flew away on a vacation just yet, and momma stayed at home while poppa went to work.

What kept us all together were three things, our schools, jobs and our newspapers. New York City had a plethora of newspapers, some that have survived to this day, and everyone had his favorite. Leading the group, and appealing to the hard working lower middle class was the New York Daily News, with it’s brief headlines, pictures in the centerfold, with it's Inquiring Photographer and distinctive masthead with a camera. Sometimes people read the back page headline first, to see how their Dodgers, Giants and Yankees did the day before. As a little kid, my sister and I would fight over the Sunday comics with Dick Tracey wrapped around the whole package of Lulu, Fearless Fosdick, Lil’ Orphan Annie, Gasoline Alley and Skeezix.

The New York Daily Mirror in my opinion was exactly what it said it was, a mirror. What it mirrored was the NY Daily News. With Walter Winchell as its lead commentator, it's shape and size, format and appeal were all the same as its rival. It went out of business I believe the 60’s and then tried unsuccessfully a comeback that never took root.

The oldest newspaper in the city was the New York Post, a then very liberal newspaper to counter the conservative News in the city. Founded by Alexander Hamilton, it enjoys its success to afternoon editions in those days, which competed with other newspapers. Yes, you could actually get an afternoon edition of a newspaper you already read in the morning!

Then there were two elitist newspapers, newspapers that did not appeal to the hard working blue-collar man, with maybe a unfinished education. One was the New York Times. The Times another liberal newspaper, was a newspaper for the educated professional, especially with its Sunday Times Crossword puzzle, Best Seller book list, theatre critiques and Op-Ed page. The reader had a style and system to read this cumbersome newspaper, and in the end he was fed an editorial opinion, was overdosed in the subject he was reading, and was left with dirty hands from the newsprint. Its slogan: “All the news that’s fit to print”, was really all the news that fits.

The other elitist newspaper was the New York Herald Tribune. Starting this fall, under a plan, the Paris based paper will be rechristened The International New York Times, reflecting the company’s intention to focus on its core New York Times newspaper and to build its international presence. In days past, The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald. The paper was distinctive in its mission, to cover the globe and it was reflected in the news it reported on.

Then there was the New York Journal American. This newspaper came into the house every evening folded under the arm of Dad. As he climbed the two flights of steps coming home from a hard day at the New York Laboratory and Supply Company, in his brown wing tips and gray fedora, he would deposit the newspaper on the dining room table and head to the kitchen, while my older sister Tessie, (much older) and I fought over the paper. There were other newspapers that existed such as the Brooklyn Eagle, but were fading fast.