The ‘Daily News’ Future Is So Bright, Ron Burkle’s Gotta Wear Shades — And Bash Tabloid Journalism

The Daily News has actually been doing pretty well recently. In addition to ridiculous covers, the paper’s future looks brighter. The group with the inside track appears to be Yucaipa, headed up by billionaire Ron Burkle — who’s recently been in the news because of the alleged extortion of him by a New York Post gossip freelancer. Yucaipa is partnering with the Newspaper Guild, the union that represents the workers at the DN/Inky and 10 other papers.

Still, not a day goes by when some Daily News staffer doesn’t bemoan the fact that many media accounts of the sale of Knight Ridder — or the sale of the Inquirer and Daily News to another buyer — say that whoever buys the papers might close the DN. (Okay, not so much anymore. And I’m sure some days it doesn’t happen.) And why blame them? If reporters kept writing that I was going to lose my job, I might get pretty angry after two or three or four or [infinity symbol] times.

But when aforementioned rhetoric is coming from Ron Burkle himself… ruh roh (emphasis mine):

No doubt the challenge of upholding the highest media standards has never been harder. But institutions that give up will find that the lines between them and bloggers, demi-pundits and rumor-mongers on the Internet will be blurred beyond recognition. Newspapers that continue to go down the road of tabloidism, that adopt the shoddy standards of gossip reporting, and that arrogantly resist correcting their mistakes, risk losing their special role in our democracy.

Well, maybe he just means the DN‘ll have to go broadsheet format. Right? Right!?

Yellow Peril [Wall Street Journal via Gawker]