BIG APPLE AND PUSSY-CATS
The press:
Paul Johnson in New York
and Bermuda
THE American newspaper world is discus- sing with some apprehension Rupert Mur- doch's next move. When he bought the New York Post, and took it down-market, and then the Chicago Sun-Times, liberal journalists treated him like the devil incar- nate. But he undoubtedly saved both these famous old papers from closure. Now he says he is going to sell them, and fear is in the air.
The sales are probably inevitable as a result of Murdoch's two billion dollar purchase from Metromedia of seven televi- sion stations, including ones in New York and Chicago. Under Federal Communica- tion Commission rules, no one can own both a daily paper and a television station in a major market. There is no doubt about Murdoch's determination to become the first global telecommunications tycoon. To get the television stations he is acquiring US citizenship, which means renouncing his Australian nationality and with it direct control of some of his television empire there. Some New York cynics say he intends to hang on to the Post on the grounds that no one who has the money and the skill to keep it going is likely to want to buy it from him. Despite all his efforts it is still losing about $15 million a year. When there is a brutal choice be- tween closing a paper and bending the anti-monopoly rules, the FCC is allowed to exercise discretion. But Murdoch himself insists he will part with the two papers. He told members of the House of Representa- tives telecommunications sub-committee last week he had no intention of asking for special indulgence. He added: 'I feel badly about the Chicago Sun-Times because it's doing so well now.' My guess is that, if Murdoch does sell, neither paper will survive for long.
Murdoch has also put up for sale the Village Voice and will, I daresay, be glad to see the last of it. The paper is a lucrative property and was once my favourite read- ing in the Big Apple. But it seems to me it has now lost its zest, partly because the people who run it have let their left-wing prejudices and ideologies take precedence over the paper's own instincts for raising hell and having fun. They hated Murdoch, but he gave them all the freedom they wanted — more than they deserved, in my opinion. They now seem to think they have a divine right to impose similar terms on his successor. Why? No bunch of journal- ists, left, right or centre, have the prescrip- tive privilege of forcing their opinions down the readers' throats.
In my view New York could do with a more varied press. The stage-army of liberals which dominates the media there gives everything a uniform and predictable tone, the Wall Street Journal and the editorial page of the Post excepted. The New Yorker exudes the upper-middle-class progressive consensus of the Forties and Fifties, the Village Voice the strident radi- calism of the Sixties and early Seventies, while the New York magazine tries to be more contemporary left, with articles on such subjects as the way in which rich Yuppies are taking over the Upper West Side and driving out the deserving poor. The same issue carried a ferocious attack, masquerading as a review, on a book called The Rise and Fall of New York City, which has just been published by Roger Starr, a member of the New York Times editorial board. The writer of the piece, an excitable lady called Rhoda Koenig, is angry be- cause Starr does not subscribe to the opinions certified as tenable by the New York liberal orthodoxy; indeed she detects elements of elitism and even attitudes which might plausibly be described as conservative. Personally I am amazed to find that the New York Times harbours such a rascal, and I imagine he is very much an endangered species there, like the glorious Audubon originals now on display at the New York Historical Society.
As it happens, the people who read rather than write the New York magazine appear to be a good deal more conserva- tive, not to say, reactionary, than Starr, to judge by the 'Strictly Personal' ads they insert in search of mates. The ladies demand handsome men with lots of money; the gents insist on youth, glamour and often cash too. The most common requirement, which occurs in virtally all the ads, is 'successful'. There are no genuflections to racial sensitivities: adver- tisers openly state their preferences for white, black, Jewish or oriental spouses.
The only hint of Women's Lib is that the girls, too, now brazenly flaunt their wealth or success in listing their qualifications. One begins: 'I'm in great shape, physically, mentally and financially'. Another is a 'high-achieving, successful, romantic Wall Street lady'; she puts her requirements pretty bluntly also: a 'financially-secure professional WASP', who must be 'family- oriented'. A 'beautiful, Ivy-educated. Anglophile black woman banker with not- able elan and flair for gracious living' wants a 'tall, handsome, refined superachiever'. A lady who presents herself as a 'shapely. white, 29-year-old beauty' needs a man who is 'handsome and successful'. Yet another, a 'PhD Harvard post-graduate' who is 'stunningly beautiful, blonde, thin, loving and affectionate, a classy female with exceptional scientific accomplish- ments', puts her requirement as 'an ex- traordinarily successful, ambitious entrep- reneur, MD or investment banker'. One dame is less exacting: she merely wants her man to be 'slim' and 'wear a suit in the week'.
The men like to describe themselves as 'dynamic', 'sensitive', 'athletic' and 'ex- tremely attractive', though one simply puts his cash on the line and epitomises himself as a 'wealthy Wall Street dealer'. Another is 'athletic, handsome, well-educated and successful' and thinks he will make 'a loving and strong husband who is secure within'; he needs a girl who is 'gorgeous, caring and 22'. With readers like this, who cares what the editors think?
On my way back from New York I spent a few days in Bermuda, Britain's oldest . colony, where readers and editors are more old-fashioned. The Bermuda Sun, I noted, has a political column, 'Weekend Commentary', by Eric Hopwood, a gossip column, 'One Man's View', by Eric Hop- wood, and a Managing Director called Eric Hopwood. The colony also has a 17th- century printing-press, still in working order, not wholly unlike the machines our monopoly print unions still force Fleet Street to use. I love these traditional empire papers, which once flourished all over the world — the Gibraltar Chronicle.
the Times of Malta, the Jamaica Gleaner, the Straits Times, to name a few survivors.
Bermuda's daily, the Royal Gazette, is an admirable specimen of the genre. It hag a lively page of Letters to the Editor, signed by such concerned citizens as 'Anxious, Cockburn's Cut', 'Amused, Spanish Point' and — yes! — 'Disgusted, Somerset Is- land'. 'Cat-lover', writing last week, de- plores what she describes as Bermuda's 'cat-explosion', which she attributes to the carelessness of Bermudans in failing to get their cats 'doctored' and leads to a multi- plicity of 'half-starved pussies'. I must admit that I saw some pretty promiscuous behaviour on the part of the colony's cats, and in the gardens dedicated to the mem- ory of Admiral Somers, Bermuda's found- er in 1609, I saw two of the creature fighting over a piece of lettuce one of then' had snatched from my wife's sandwich• But, oh to be in a place where cat- explosions are the principal worry!
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