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Not ready for the obit pages

Ellis Henican

May 4, 2008

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It's a little surprising, all this mogul attention.

Weren't newspapers already supposed to be dead?

Rupert, Mort and Chuck - lots of things have been said about all three of them. But I don't believe I've ever heard these men described as dumb. They've all made fortunes in tough, competitive businesses. And now they're fighting mightily for the chance to own us.

They must know something, right?

Ellis Henican Bio | E-mail | Recent columns

For far too long, black crepe has hung over the newspaper business. We're the buggy-whip makers of a century ago, or so we keep being told: outdated, outmoded and soon to be gone. Milked by faceless corporations. Pickpocketed by Google and Craigslist. Left to the dwindling loyalties of the stubborn, the irrelevant and the old.

That stuff gets repeated often enough, people actually believe it.

But hold on a second, Digit-head!

Murdoch wants to pay $580 million to add Newsday to News Corp. Zuckerman says he'll pony up the same, looking to shack the paper up with his Daily News. And Dolan, who already has a cable company, doesn't want to be outbid. He's in at $70 million higher, and that's just the first round.

It's not like these guys don't own nice things already. It's not like they lack access to the media.

In my time at Newsday, we've had three owners - two from Chicago, one from L.A. All had their limitations, all had their charms. There are people walking the halls in Melville, people older than I, who can count up to four.

I'm not smart enough to know where all this will land. What does it mean to those of us who toil here in one way or another? What does it mean to the advertisers and the readers, without whom there'd be no reason to?

But I do know this much, and you can take it to your Internet bank: There's quite a bit left in this buggy-whip industry, and there's still huge talent to go around. Reporters and editors, truckers and pressmen, ad reps, librarians and clerks, giving their all and then some every day.

For years, we've heard how futile it is.

Well, here's 580 million - or 650 or more - saying all those crepe-hangers just might be wrong.

WHO'S COUNTING: Gerry Bringmann usually sticks to transit advocacy. But the LIRR rider rep has a question about missing school-district funds: Did State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli notice, in the course of his extensive audits, how many L.I. districts have items on the comptroller's own unclaimed-property list? Given all the recent fiscal uproar, you'd think these beleaguered districts might want to go collect their stuff!

ASKED AND UNANSWERED: Is this the whole story, getting state troopers to patrol state roads like the LIE and Sunrise Highway? Or will the FBI start handling the speed traps on federal interstates? . . . Who knew Roger Clemens was such a country-music lover - and such a golf fan? . . . With that drive-by arraignment of 500-pound Bernard Musumeci, have the scales of Suffolk County justice been tipped for good? . . . OK, we've all learned our lesson from the subprime crisis. So can we please have mortgages again? . . . "Ready in 10": Is that the band playing the 8-mile mark of the Long Island Marathon - or just another plea by exhausted runners to extend their water breaks? . . . What was Vito Fossella really celebrating before his drunken-driving arrest outside Washington? That he's New York City's last Republican congressman? Not for long, he's not, if Democrats Stephen Harrison or Domenic Recchia get their way . . . Will Rodney Morrison start selling T-shirts at his Peace Pipe smoke shop in Mastic? "I'm not a murderer, robber or arsonist," the front of the shirts could say, reflecting Thursday's verdict. And on the back? "Just a simple cigarette racketeer!" . . . Any other rich guys want to buy us? . . . Huntington baker Richard Reinwald got big praise for testifying in Congress about rising food costs. But will his customers be any more understanding about the 80-cent-a-loaf increase in Reinwald's rye bread? . . . Which lasts longer: Billy Wagner's fragile reputation for clubhouse congeniality or Oliver Perez's pitching career with the Mets? . . . Barbara Walters recalls married Republican Sen. Edward Brooke as "brilliant" and "exciting." Does he remember her as "the woman who can't keep a secret?" . . . Could it be? Could it really be? Newspapers have a future after all?

INK ON PAPER

1 Folds better

2 Smears nicer

3 Crinkles louder

4 Glares less

5 Still where the great reporting and writing lives