Give Us This Day Our Daily News
Tucker, William
GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY NEWS. U nlike almost everyone I know in New York, I am a loyal fan of the Daily News, New York's largest tabloid. Like all great art, it offers a simple reflection of the...
...Never mind that, at the very moment he spoke, upstate prison workers were protesting in the streets over Governor Cuomo's own efforts to fire people in order to salvage the mess he has made of the state budget (deficit $4 billion and counting...
...The people who write for, and read, the Times, on the other hand, make your skin crawl...
...Many apply, but few are chosen...
...Cardinal O'Connor's presence was more interesting...
...Because our hearts are in the right place, somebody must come in and subsidize us for all the extravagances we create...
...Fair enough...
...Just the other night, for example, I passed a candlelight vigil of people protesting our involvement in the Middle East...
...Never mind that the paper is so hamstrung with work rules that bundles must often be tied by one union, untied, and then retied by another...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1991 15...
...Over the past three years, the Times has printed two op-ed page submissions in which readers apologized for being mugged...
...He is a literate middle-aged man who makes $40 a day selling the News and works evenings doing research for a lawyer uptown...
...T he thought of living in New York 1 without the News scares me to death...
...You are striking for all of us," he told the union throng...
...To the Cardinal, this constituted "exploitation of the homeless" and "unfair labor practice...
...William Tucker (Mr...
...No," he said, "they've got a very powerful union up there and it's very rough to get in...
...Although the News has far exceeded the Times and the Post in putting blacks on the editorial staff (Bob Herbert and Earl Caldwell, New York's only black columnists, have both refused to strike at the News), union policies have forced it to go on hiring the sons and nephews and cousins and grandsons of the people who worked for it forty years ago...
...It is, quite simply, "The Voice of the People" —at least, of the people I want to know...
...Because each new event fits so casually into the coordinates, the Daily News strike has been easy to pigeonhole...
...We are New Yorkers, brave and true, supporters of every social welfare program known to mankind...
...For the governor, this was an easy one...
...Never mind that its parent company, the Chicago Tribune, has lost $110 million in the last ten years and announced on January 17 that it will close down if it can't find a buyer...
...The letters to the editor in the News are pure gold...
...T he News strike was not two weeks 1 old when striking workers and their supporters were addressed at a street rally in front of the News's 42nd Street building by the leading representatives of church and state, Governor Mario Cuomo and John Cardinal O'Connor...
...By the time the rally was held, the unions had already torched several delivery trucks...
...A middle-class New Yorker can't even go out and express his opinion without pretending to be someone else...
...I bought my paper, and glanced up the stairs, only to see him shoving the little old lady into a wall...
...And now the News is on strike—not just any strike, but one of those passion plays in which New Yorkers routinely destroy their best institutions...
...The other day I chatted with the man who sells the News at the 14th Street subway stop...
...When I stepped up to buy mine, a tall, skinny Greenwich Village-type kid with wire-rim glasses pushed between us and shouted, "The Daily News is on strike...
...Why do subway clerks sit there counting change while fifteen people are waiting on line to buy tokens...
...Both said they understood their attackers' feelings perfectly, felt sorry for them, and only wished they could have done more to help...
...I read the Daily News, I know what's going on outside my doorstep...
...As the News itself has repeatedly noted, the unions have become utterly unrepresentative of the population of New York...
...Of course, none of this makes any difference to liberal New Yorkers, always living in the past...
...Would you want to wake up every morning with the thought of having to share breakfast with these people...
...If you think living in New York is tough, try doing it without the Daily News...
...I read the New York Times, I know what's going on in Islamabad...
...In America you can choose your own destiny...
...But were they holding up signs saying "Hands Off Saddam" or "Kuwait Is Not Worth American Lives...
...Thus, writing in the New York Times, James Wieghart, who served as editor of the News from 1982 to 1984, concluded that the only solution was for somebody in New York---i`with deep pockets'—to buy the paper and subsidize it...
...Thanks to the people in the local fire house for bringing my kids Christmas presents...
...Like all great art, it offers a simple reflection of the world...
...They are father-and-son unions, 99 percent white and mostly made up of people who have long since moved to the suburbs...
...The men who are hawking the News on the streets and subways today are virtually all black...
...7itcker, TAS 's New York correspondent, is a writer for Forbes...
...In fact, it is the first time I have ever seen black men monopolize any sort of occupational "concession" in New York...
...As I approached my hawker on the subway platform the other day, a little old lady in front of me was buying the paper...
...To the New Yorker, there are only three points on the moral compass: (1) the Vietnam War, (2) the civil rights movement, and (3) the good old days of the 1930s, when, as one veteran recently put it, "you could smell revolution on the streets of New York...
...It is, of course, a conflict between "the bosses" and "the workers...
...The Cardinal is quite upset because the News has hired unemployed and homeless people to hawk the paper on the streets...
...Never mind that the striking Teamster drivers make up to $100,000 a year, often without even working a full week...
...I couldn't get through the crowds to catch up with him, but I promise, if I see him again I'm going to loosen one of his teeth...
...They have since burned down a half-dozen stores...
...Only a few weeks later, the Times opened up another series of editorials called "America's Duty to New York," in which it attributes New York's troubles to "massive Federal unfairness" and whines that "the rest of the country refuses to pay its fair share...
...No, they were singing old civil rights songs...
...I asked him if he had ever applied for a job at the News before the strike...
...Which raises an interesting point...
Vol. 24 • March 1991 • No. 3
