Tribulations

New York's newest daily

Of all the illustrious American dailies gone to that great newsstand in the sky, few have been so deeply mourned as New York's old Herald Tribune. Founded as the Tribune in 1841 by Horace Greeley, married in 1924 to the popular Herald, and killed in a 1966 shootout in the city's competitive marketplace, the Trib was for decades palpitating proof that a paper could be both serious and fun.

The memory lingers on. Some time around Thanksgiving a group of conservative investors led by Leonard Saffir, 47, a longtime aide to former Senator James Buckley, intends to begin publishing what would be New York City's first new major daily in more than a decade. The paper will have a strikingly modern design, an initial pressrun of 200,000 and, perhaps, a hauntingly familiar name: the Trib.

Perhaps, because the old Trib did not go gently into that good nightside. The paper's overseas edition, the International Herald Tribune (circ. 118,000), is still published in Paris by IHT Corp., a joint venture of the New York Times, Washington Post and Whitney Communications, the old Trib's last owner. Accordingly, IHT Corp. is suing the owners of the new Trib for trademark infringement. The Trib, in turn, has sued IHT and the Times for harassment and antitrust violations, asking $7.5 million in treble damages. Saffir accuses IHT of trying to prevent his paper from appearing, and notes that at least 250 U.S. papers use the word Tribune in their titles. Says he: "We're calling it the Trib because the name is short and snappy, with newspaper significance."

Indeed, any resemblance between the old Trib and the new entry is coincidental. Though Saffir has chosen as editor John Denson, seventyish, who also edited the Herald Tribune (from 1961 through 1962), the new Trib will lack one important characteristic of its predecessor: news. Denson has designed a stylish, magazine-like tabloid filled with canned features from syndicates and wire services, graced with an aggressively pro-business editorial page and almost devoid of breaking stories. Saffir defends that formula, which was first presented in a June 27 preview edition, on the grounds that the city's three major dailies generally avoid syndicated material. "New Yorkers never get to see this stuff, so it will be fresh and new to them," he says. It is also cheaper than hiring reporters, and Saffir expects to get by with a relatively skinny editorial staff of 100. All together, the Trib's backers, who include former Treasury Secretary William Simon, have pledged something less than $6 million to the venture so far and expect to break even in a year.

That would be an impressive feat, considering that the Trib will miss most of New York's crucial fourth-quarter advertising season this year, and that the city's three dailies are fighting harder than ever among themselves for readers and advertisers. Saffir is not cowed by the competition. The morning News (circ. 2 million) and the afternoon Post (circ. 609,000), he says, are the "Chinese restaurants of journalism--an hour after you read them you're still hungry." As for the newly restyled Times (circ. 854,000), Saffir calls it "successful, fat, stuffy" and alleges that the paper has perpetrated a virtual news blackout on the birth of its new morning competitor. Counters Times Executive Editor A.M. Rosenthal: "Mr. Saffir's remarks are too contemptible to answer." It is true that the Times has limited its Trib coverage to brief announcements. But Times editors have reason to be skeptical. Beginning in 1973, they devoted considerable attention to the plans of Oilman John Shaheen to launch a new daily called the New York Press. Although he invested a reported $25 million in the paper, it has not yet appeared, and Shaheen has stopped setting dates for its debut.

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