Who’s winning the battle of the front pages?
What to do when the biggest news story in the city fails to resolve itself on schedule? The Daily News runs a transit-strike page that looks suspiciously as if it had been set up to fit whatever story might come–had last night’s talks been more decisive, just keep the generic train image and sub in DERAILED! or ON TRACK! But the talks weren’t decisive, so the actual message to would-be commuters checking out the newsstands in the morning is WE DON’T KNOW, EITHER!
The Post opts out of the MTA story entirely and goes with a new installment of the FIRE FIEND saga and the welcome (if not necessarily front-page-caliber) news that the Gotti family TV show has been cancelled. The split page is a bad idea, but the Braunstein item is a genuine update, with facts and everything, not vamping. And both “BLOOD MONEY” and “sells cells” are triumphant examples of not-quite-wordplay.
And not that it counts in the contest, but going with Braunstein turned out to be prescient, to boot.
Winner: New York Post
Overall standings: Daily News 16, New York Post 17
