Rupert Murdoch's New York Post has been the most conservative major newspaper in New York state for decades.
The Murdoch Post has been a cheerleader, in its news and editorial pages, for right-wing causes like the Bush wars, hatred of unions, lower taxes for rich people, "traditional marriage," charter schools, fracking, etc.
Though the Murdoch Post obviously appealed to the 27 percent or so of hard-core conservatives (even in NY), its business model never worked. Sure it sold a lot of papers that had ads in them, but the Murdoch Post regularly lost somewhere between $50 million and $100 million a year.
Now that News Corp. has decided to split into a TV/movie/satellite company and a newspaper company next month, the pressure is on to cut costs at money-losing papers.
More below.
The Murdoch Post eliminated 13 more newsroom positions via layoffs Friday, and had bought out another 10 or so editorial employees recently.
Murdoch toadie Col Allan, yet another tabloid Brit to edit the paper, said the layoffs will "continue to strengthen the business of the Post."
Well, that's what toadies are paid to say, but the business of the Post has been getting worse, and lousier coverage of beats like politics, courts and horse racing will not turn that around.
The Capital New York story includes this about the business of the Murdoch Post:
The Post is the sixth most widely-read paper in the U.S., but during the six months between October and March, its combined print and digital average weekday circulation fell 9.9. percent year-over-year to 500,521, including 299,950 print copies, according to data released last week by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The Post's average Sunday circulation plummetted 18.5 percent to 353,900 during the same period.
The
New York Post has been a Murdoch vanity project that gave him some political influence in the country's greatest city. The
Post clearly helped elect and re-elect Rudy Giuliani as mayor and George Pataki as NY governor, but lately the city and state have become much more Democratic/liberal, so the
Post has become more irrelevant and less read.
Like the Moonie Times, the Murdoch Post cannot survive without its vanity subsidy.
And it is clear that the Murdoch subsidy will substantially diminish, or end entirely, in the near future.
First, because of the News Corp split; second, because Murdoch's heirs will be running the show soon, and it's not their vanity project.