NY Daily News went full Trump Derangement Syndrome, now it’s laying off half its news staff
The push to become the most outrageously anti-Trump major newspaper failed financially.
The NY Daily News does some good reporting.
Unfortunately, the paper long ago went full Trump Derangement Syndrome. The NY Daily News covers are notorious for belittling Trump in ways not normally seen in major newspapers. (See examples of recent covers below.)
The decision to become New York’s most outrageously anti-Trump newspaper was deliberate, an attempt to save the NY Daily News from the pressures newspapers everywhere face.
The New York Times covered the strategy shift in January 2016, as Trump was rising in the Republican primaries:
On a recent afternoon, Jim Rich, the editor in chief of The Daily News, sat at his computer playing around with front-page headlines, a few well-chosen words that would capture the day’s biggest news: Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary.
In a few minutes, he had what he thought was a promising candidate: “CRAZY, STUPID LOVE.”
Mr. Rich walked it out into the newsroom for feedback. The paper’s copy chief, Jon Blackwell, proposed an alternative: “I’M WITH STUPID!”
The Times further reported on the strategy, which focused on clickbait covers, which seemed divorced from financial reality:
It was the latest in a series of attention-grabbing covers that have shifted the conversation around the struggling paper. Just a few months ago, after an aborted sale and sweeping layoffs, The News seemed to have completed its devolution from the model of a big-city tabloid to a battered symbol of the diminished state of America’s newspapers. But the recent string of covers, which were all widely shared on social media, have sent a very different message — if not about the paper’s long-term financial prospects, then at least about its continuing cultural relevance….
These covers can now reach more people than they ever did on the newsstand. The problem is that readers don’t have to pay to see them. For all of the attention The News’s recent front pages have drawn, it’s unlikely that they — or perhaps anything — can rescue the paper from its precarious financial position. It’s a familiar story. The News’s circulation has been plummeting for years; it sits at about 241,000 on weekdays. It seems far-fetched to imagine that the paper will ever capture enough digital advertising to offset the declining revenue from its shrinking print base.
New York Magazine also covered the cover strategy:
The latest and most visible manifestation of that new strategic direction is a reinvention of the paper’s “wood” — newsman-speak for page one — for an era of hyperpartisan social sharing. Just as tabloid covers used to amuse, inform, and outrage passersby on the sidewalk, enticing them to pick them up and read all about it, the Daily News has arguably been the most aggressive and successful newspaper brand at turning the old-school institution of a front page into an irresistibly “like”-able image on Facebook — at least for people who don’t care for the right-wing politics of the New York Post. “You’ve seen it with the gun issue; you’ve seen it with Trump,” Rich, 44, explained one afternoon in early January in the paper’s quarters downtown. “We don’t shy away from the controversial issue. You’ve seen publications on the right, but there’s a vacuum on the middle left on these issues, a consistent, strong voice, and I like to think we’re doing a decent job of filling that void.”
It hasn’t worked out for the NY Daily News, and now there are massive layoffs.
HuffPo reports, New York Daily News Layoffs Ax Half The Newsroom Staff
The New York Daily News, a storied big-city tabloid known for its ruthless and splashy front pages, laid off half its newsroom staff on Monday, marking the latest round of cuts at the beleaguered Tronc company’s media holdings.
“We are fundamentally restructuring the Daily News,” an email from Tronc to the staff reads. “We are reducing today the size of the editorial team by approximately 50 percent and re-focusing much of our talent on breaking news — especially in areas of crime, civil justice and public responsibility.” The paper had about 85 newsroom employees prior to the cuts, according to the New York Post.
The notice said human resources would notify those affected by day’s end. As reporters and editors waited, some were seen going around the newsroom, thanking each other for their work. “Just trying to make the best of it,” a staffer said.
The entire social media staff reportedly was fired:
The reactions from politicians and journalists focus on the need to support local journalism. The former Editor in Chief, who was just fired, tweeted:
If you hate democracy and think local governments should operate unchecked and in the dark, then today is a good day for you.
— Jim Rich (@therealjimrich) July 23, 2018
The anti-Trump NY Attorney General tweeted:
https://twitter.com/NewYorkStateAG/status/1021398425143848963
What is completely lacking in the reactions is introspection about how solid news reporting was swamped by insane clickbait and anti-Trump covers.
Here is a sample of NY Daily News Covers in just the past few months.
[Reminder – the image in this cover is NOT of a child separated from her mother]
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Do they want the Republicans to sweep the mid-terms? This is how they help the Republicans to flip the remnant of the Democratic strongholds.
I am on my way home after a cross-country trip to visit my (mostly still Democratic) relatives. They still say they dislike Trump, and give as their reasons news stories I know to be false. But every one of them is heartily sick of the hyperventilating in the news. Meanwhile, they admit that they hope DJT succeeds with his policy initiatives.
My take on it is, DJT has feet of clay, just like every one of our past Presidents and politicians. Nonetheless, his policies are very much to my liking. To the extent he succeeds in implementing his platform, he will both keep his base and win over large numbers of skeptics.
They lost almost one $Billion Dollars doing that.
“according to tabloid rival the NY Post, the Daily News has lost $90 million in the past 3 years”
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/07/23/new-york-daily-news-announces-layoffs/
Perhaps you can give us a flavor of the untrue articles that your Dem relatives read that make them dislike Trump, since I can read untrue blurts from Trump and his henchmen in multiples every day which obviously didn’t influence your mindset to the extent that you (gasp) changed your mind.
Like you, I have always believed that I was on the right side with conservative Republicans until all these populists showed up in the party in order to rid ourselves of “establishment” politicians that no one could name. I am likely further to the right in my thinking than you but I also knew that Trump has spent his life screwing people out of money. I had the personal displeasure of fighting his casinos to get paid on hundreds of thousands of dollars of purchases made by his cash-only businesses with guaranteed gross margins. In the end, my employer experienced substantial losses due to Donald’s bankruptcies. So the stories out there say Trump didn’t get burned badly, and he just kept doing bankruptcies – six in all.
Bankers, customers, investors, employees, suppliers and contractors kept believing Trump, so more money, time and effort for the benefit of Trump kept coming – but Trump didn’t pay. Now the fools are the voters who will not open their eyes to the fraud swirling around the president, nor will these voters read the readily available stories of illegalities that the man has perpetrated in the past.
“whole entire” is some really fine editing work.
Nice covers. They remind me of posters for the kinds of movies they’ll only show on late-night UHF channels.
I wonder what the inside pages look like. How do they do the daily crossword puzzle without using any big words?
UHF stations stopped existing since TV went digital.
BTW I love those movies and I wish there were more of them.
Better then much of the stuff we have now.
Sorry to be pedantic, but it was VHF-Lo (ch 2-6) that went away. Those stations were moved to UHF, but kept their channel numbers. Since digital allowed each channel to be split, there are a lot of old movies and old TV programs being broadcast on the additional channels that the broadcasters received. If you live near a metro area and have a decent outside antenna, you can get more of that stuff than you can swallow. There are websites like https://nocable.org that will give you distance & direction of everything you can receive by zip code and antenna type.
The Daily News has been competing with the money losing and heavily subsidized Murdock owned NY Post for 40+ years. The Post was liberal and somewhat profitable until Murdock bought it and switched it to conservative. The Daily New’s used to be conservative. It claimed to have the largest circulation in the country.
Fish refuse to be wrapped in either one.
You might also notice that if you do an internet search for a news item with any search engine, neither rag will show up.
Sorry to be pedantic, but it’s Murdoch, not Murdock.
Touché
Well it was a gamble. And as they say when folks lay their cards–or in this case the newspaper’s financial statements down on the table, “Read ’em and weep”.
No President is a saint. JFK screwed everything that wore a skirt, and LBJ wasn’t far behind him in that category. Nixon was a liar; Carter was a bible beating pussy. Reagan–well he had his flaws. Scared the hell out of the Europeans with his Star Wars initiative (although things came out all right). The Bushes, father and son, were New England patricians. Not my style but they were gentlemen at least. Billy Jeff thought with his schlong and couldn’t keep it in his pants if he could put it down the throat of a young woman. Obama–a lying sneering,condescending hypocrite. Against that background, Trump’s many faults could be thought of as simply run of the mine.
And as for the NY Daily News strategy–I’ve got single German thought: “Leck mich am Arsch”. You can catch the drift even if you don’t speak German.
I supported Bush the son and have thought about how wrong I was. He is an incredibly stupid man that cost the lives of so many Americans. Even his strategy to go after Bin Laden with mercenaries when we had him trapped at Tora Bora instead of our own troops was just plain stupid. I’m sorry if this upsets people but Bush should keep his patrician mouth shut. He was a terrible President that should just fade into obscurity with Jimmy Carter.
I understand completely – a lot of us spent 8 years defending him, and the only thanks we ever got was a knife in the back. No more.
I have that scar too. It’s a good reminder of what we are never going back to.
“But will they fight for after they hear you wouldn’t fight for them?” Jon Snow, Game of Thrones
Basic leadership, and they still don’t get it. Or worse, they did it on purpose. Failure Theater.
Better version, at 7:15.
https://youtu.be/Kv1TKpEOK2I
Remeber, any whore trunp bought was prior to is taking high office. Unlike clinton and kennedy.
As for obama: the first president to GIVE a lewinsky while in office. And likely to his transgender fake wife, mooochelle.
And our governor is upset because they didn’t notify nor consult the state before they did it.
Seems he doesn’t understand that is not the state’s concern.
To a Lib, everything is the State’s concern
To a Con, your reproductive rights are the State’s concern.
To a prog, state sponsored murder is fine.
How do you feel about state sponsored executions when it is beyond doubt that there are innocent people on death rows?
I’ll bet you don’t give a damn about those innocent lives. After all, most of them are guilty. So what if we kill a few innocent ones.
Actually mightyNutcase, I’m opposed to state sponsored executions.
Simply because I know the government can’t do much of anything well.
I have no moral compunction against the death penalty however.
There are few executions of innocents by the way. But I don’t trust the government in such matters.
You find the murder of babies just fine. People like you are murderers, plain and simple.
Some may be innocent of the crime they were convicted for, but they usually have very long rap sheets and are anything but innocent.
I love that.
Cuomo is such a piece of sh- work…
Couldn’t happen to nicer group of journos.
Get woke, go broke.
not as much fun for leftists
– now that the media monopoly has been broken
– leftists have to DEFEND their loony ideas
“The meeting lasted less than a minute.”
(HA HA HA HA HA) ^ (Raised to the power of 1,000)
So over-the-top venomous and hateful, it doesn’t seem to be the product of a reasoned and calculated business decision, but more the personal opinions of editors and staff unable to restrain themselves.
The NY Daily News is a crappy paper and has been for years. Betting on anti-Trump is just more partisan swill of the same.
This is good Monday news one can enjoy.
“We are reducing today the size of the editorial team by approximately 50 percent and re-focusing much of our talent on breaking news”
Yup, it’s what I told Caleb Howe when his NeverTrumper Crew was cut from RedState:
How many back up punters do the Dallas Cowboys need this year? I’m not sure either, but I know it’s not 27.
As for the New York Daily News, I can get their level of analysis by clicking over to Democratic Underground.
Maybe it’s good sign that even New Yorkers are getting tired of that stuff. Apparently, they’re not buying the paper any more.
Someday one of these “news” outlets is going to adopt a right-wing slant on the news and make a fortune. Sadly, most of them would rather go out of business than even be fair with the other side.
As John Wayne used to say, “That’ll be the day!”
I thought that was Buddy Holly!
While the DN is trash, there really aren’t many news outlets that aren’t these days. Papers are loosing more and more readers as the people who used to read them every day are dying off. Those who still read newspapers are finding propaganda more worthless by the day.
Eventually most news will be on line only, most hiding behind paywalls, till even they are gone.
Other than trying to shape public opinion with their editorialized news, there isn’t a lot of value in papers anymore. And comedians pretending to be news are getting more viewers than traditional news outlets.
I remember when you could pick up a DN or NYT paper and get news, even if it was slightly slanted, it wasn’t as it is today. It’s sad when these news organizations have become parodies of themselves rather than doing their jobs. They were out to change the world, and it ended up changing theirs, not for the better.
Editorials became the standard writing style, infused in everything, and the hell with giving facts. Instead let’s talk about what someone thinks, never mind their actions, because actions lie. And these laid off reporters are already blaming others for their own actions.
“there’s a vacuum on the middle left on these issues … and I like to think we’re doing a decent job of filling that void.”
He seems to have a strange idea of where the center is.
Most Democrats do.
Extra. Extra.
NY Daily News publishes its failure.
Read all about it.
I won’t miss newspapers when they’re extinct. Plenty of other ways to light charcoal.
T.U.R.D.S. — Trump Unacceptance & Resistance Disorder Syndrome
Michelle Obama is partly responsible for this outcome.
When we went low, the NY Daily News just went too high.
The sad thing is that there are a large number of people who find their own views reflected perfectly in those covers. They are not driven away, they’re feeling confirmed. True, they’re not around in our Internet blog silos, and probablybnot among people we prefer to talk to. But there are tens of millions of them, do not be fooled. Of course, they’re too cheap to buy a print daily news, and feel it is to downscale for their special personages to browse the website.
BeagleEar you’re probably correct, but my mom is as dyed-in-the-wool a democrat as you’ll find, and LAST YEAR she was already saying she was tired of the whole hysteria about trump and he got elected, and tough if you didn’t like it.
She’s a normal American as compared to the new varieties that don’t believe in being a good loser.
I had no idea that intensity of vitriol was on newspapers. I mean some of that isn’t anything I’d put in my living room even if was about the Kenyan instead of Trump.
As long as Mike Lupica is one of those fired, I’ll be happy.
AMEN!!!