US tabloid tells new owner to 'get lost'

IN A glorious, liberating moment last week, the journalists on the New York Post, a bankrupt tabloid with bold front-page headlines, told its owner: 'Get Lost.'

Such disrespect by journalists for their proprietor in his own newspaper prompted Norman Mailer to say that it might signal an entirely new relationship between writers and publishers: a magical time when money could no longer buy influence.

Others, who recalled the 'headless body found in topless bar' kind of journalism, introduced to the Post by Rupert Murdoch more than a decade ago, viewed it as just another unsavoury week in the recent history of America's oldest daily.

It all started after the Post editorial staff became so angry at the antics of the businessmen seeking to purchase the tabloid that they mutinied. The paper's latest suitor, Abraham Hirschfeld, a car-park and health-club king, sacked several key journalists, but they stayed at their desks. They wrote one unflattering story after another about their new owner, who has said he wants the Post mainly for its fine building overlooking the East River.

'Who is this nut?' reporters asked in a headline above a biography of Mr Hirschfeld. 'He is what political theorists might call a 'useful idiot'. He is a relatively wealthy, mean-spirited, insecure, dishevelled, profoundly angry and frustrated man. His attempted takeover comes as his years have advanced and his faculties, apparently, have declined.' Mr Hirschfeld is 73.

On Tuesday the front page was filled with a 19th-century portrait of Alexander Hamilton, who founded the paper in 1801. A big tear was rolling down his cheek. Inside, the columns ignored the news and instead retold colourful stories of 'Honest Abe'.

In appealing to readers to help them to ditch Mr Hirschfeld, they did not take issue with his right to own a newspaper; they simply felt he was the wrong man for the job. Reporters recalled the time in 1976 when Mr Hirschfeld went into the office of Dorothy Green, the head of New York's environmental division, and announced that he was holding her hostage until she approved a clean-air permit for one of his garages. Ms Green was rescued by colleagues, who broke down a door.

The Post columnist Jack Newfield began his article: 'Fifteen years ago I named Abe Hirschfeld one of the 10 worst landlords in New York. While I was preparing the story, he offered me the bribe of a free apartment if I left him out. I put him in . . . yesterday he fired me.'

At a street rally, some of New York's finest, among them Norman Mailer, lent their support - for the paper and especially its editor, Pete Hamill, whom Mr Hirschfeld had fired, but who had returned to his chair by popular demand of the staff.

It was a far cry from the 1970s, when the Post's publisher was Dorothy Schiff, who came from a wealthy banking family and ran a liberal newspaper. Then Rupert Murdoch took over, introduced his brand of tabloid stories and made sure they reflected the conservatism of the day. It is still a conservative paper.

The Post survived the wars with its immediate rival, the Daily News, but after Mr Murdoch sold up and went into television, his successor did nothing about the running losses, now about dollars 70m ( pounds 47m) a year. As the Post went into bankruptcy this month, a debt-collecting tycoon invested dollars 6m and said he would buy it as soon as he his other affairs were sorted out; then came Mr Hirschfeld, the court-appointed prospective owner.

It was a hostile takeover. On his first day, he fired 10 per cent of the 700 staff and indicated another 200 lay-offs. The unions complained, and he immediately agreed to reinstate 50 employees.

Mr Hirschfeld applied to bankruptcy court to bar Mr Hamill from the building. The court agreed, but then imposed a temporary order giving legal control to Mr Hirschfeld and editorial control to Mr Hamill.

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