Press: Last Tribulation

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New York's newest daily folds

When the tabloid-size Trib hit New York City last January, it had a print order of 200,000 copies, an innovative magazine-style format, a highly automated production system, a blue-chip board of politically conservative backers and a priceless reservoir of good wishes from a city that had not seen a major new daily in seven years. As the paper's bus ads trumpeted, THE TRIB: IT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED SOONER.

Maybe it happened too soon. Three months, 62 issues and $4 million later, its paid circulation running as low as 50,000, the Trib last week went the way of the Sun, the World, PM, the Mirror, the Journal-American, the World-Telegram, the Herald Tribune and the hybrid World Journal Tribune. Leonard Saffir, the paper's founder, publisher and editor in chief, blamed the severe winter for hampering distribution and timorous department stores for failing to advertise in the tabloid. "It was the community that put this paper out of business," fumed Saffir in a farewell address to his 130-member staff. "The major stores, Macy's, Gimbels, Bloomingdale's, were shortsighted."

Close readers might also have blamed the Trib. Despite its attempt to look fresh, the paper more often looked merely gray, with a static layout and a paucity of eye-catching pictures. The Trib often seemed overloaded with wire copy and canned columnists, undersupplied with compelling staff-written stories. Probably the paper's most memorable scoop was a report that David Frost had gone to San Clemente to edit Richard Nixon's memoirs. The David Frost in question turned out to be a copy editor of that name in the employ of the book's publisher.

The paper might have lasted longer if an expected newspaper strike had temporarily shut the city's three larger dailies, leaving the nonunion Trib the biggest daily in town. A lockout is still a possibility this week at Rupert Murdoch's Post, but the prospect of a citywide strike has receded. As it was, the Trib even missed the story of its own death. Unable to come up with the check for roughly $23,000 that the paper's New Jersey printer demanded each night before rolling the presses, Saffir canceled what would have been the self-proclaimed final edition. The staff calmly broke out some beer and began cleaning out their desks.