The Paper. The life and death of the New York Herald Tribune.

• Author: Kiker, Douglas

The Paper. The Life and Death of The New York Hearld Tribune

Every year there is a reunion partyfor the reporters and editors who worked on the New York Herald Tribune, and at every party I have attended, along toward the end of the evening, mellowed by drink, somebody raises his glass and proclaims, "By God, you could take the people in this room right now and still put out the best newspaper in the country." The rest of us raise our glasses and cheer in agreement. But we don't really believe it.

The New York Times was thebetter newspaper. In 1966, the year the Trib died, the days of glory and national prominence for The Washington Post, or respectability for the Los Angleles Times, and of legitimacy for the Chicago Tribune still lay ahead. No, the Times was the best, by far. The Trib was a distant second. No contest, really. We all knew that.

But we also knew we were workingfor an American institution, for a publication rich in prestige and accomplishment, and, most of all, for the best written daily newspaper in the world.

Somebody had to write a bookabout it all, and, lucky Trib, the man who did it is Richard Kluger, the paper's last literary editor. The Paper is a very long book, carefully researched and well-written, a fair but critical history.

It is a complicated story becausethe rise and fall of the Trib is connected to all the changes that have swept so rapidly over the nation during the past half century, changes that carried the paper, most often like a bobbing cork, along with them.

And superimposed on that, thestory of the paper is a story of strong-willed and colorful editors, reporters right out of The Front Page, wrong-headed owners, a benevolent and indulgent millionaire--an endless list, a cast colorful enough for any network mini-series.

Who in his right mind likes to seea good newspaper die? Bad newspapers, mediocre ones, non-papers, die and are dumped into hastily dug holes in some journalistic Bott Hill and are quickly forgotten. Except for workers who lost their jobs, I don't know many people who mourned the loss of New York's Mirror, Journal American, or even the World Telegram. Consider this: what if the New York Post didn't publish tomorrow?

It is different with the death ofgreat newspapers. They are remembered...