The Hidden History Of The Tribune Company's `Times-Mirror-Newsday'--Part 2

(The following article about the Tribune Company’s Times-Mirror-Newsday division was written before the 2000 merger between the Tribune Company and Times-Mirror-Newsday. It appeared in the March 6, 1991 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly Downtown)

After the Tribune Company’s Daily News started to publish its sometimes called “Scabloid” edition in the early 1990s, the circulation of Times-Mirror-Newsday’s newspaper in New York City began to increase. Yet the Guggenheim and Chandler dynasties, which shared a connection to Times-Mirror-Newsday with the Rockefeller dynasty in the early 1990s, have always been more interested in maximizing profits and monopolizing mass media power than in democratizing New York City’s economic life and providing increased mass media access for New York City’s antiwar activists, artists and writers. Hence, it’s not surprising that antiwar street people didn’t receive more than marginal daily coverage in the columns of Los Angeles’ Rockefeller/Guggenheim/Chandler press during the 1990s (before it became a division of the Tribune media-monopoly conglomerate in 2000).

Downtown asked then-New York Newsday Managing Editor Toedtman to respond to the criticism that after Gulf War I began in early 1991, Newsday provided less daily coverage to antiwar activists and antiwar demonstrators.

“Just look at page four and page six of the newspaper today. If we weren’t covering any antiwar activity, you wouldn’t find the story of an antiwar protest in Bush [I]’s church and of a Manhattan antiwar demonstration. We’ve done any number of stories on antiwar protest around the nation,” said Toedtman.

An examination of the Feb. 18, 1991 issue cited by Toedtman does reveal that brief stories of three antiwar protests appear on page four, page six, page twenty-one and page twenty-five. The front page of the same issue, however, has a headline which reads: “On Your Mark, Get Set” and a picture of U.S. Marine tanks, and pages five, page six, page seven, page fourteen and page fifteen all contain Pentagon puff-pieces. And on the day after an antiwar protest of 10,000 to 15,000 in New York City, a “City Business” spread is printed rather than a “City Peace Movement” spread.

(Downtown 3/6/91)

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