Death of The Mirror

The New York Mirror was not a good newspaper. When it folded last Wednesday, its 800,000-plus readers switched to the Daily News and hardly felt the loss. Even the man who founded the Mirror, William Randolph Hearst, once telegraphed its editor, "You are now getting out the worst newspaper in the United States."

Still, it was sad when the Mirror died, because it is always sad when a great metropolitan daily disappears. At least the Mirror could have been improved; it had potential, and now that potential is gone. Founding a newspaper is an expensive business these days; when one dies, another is not likely to spring up in its place.

The Hearst management claimed that the Mirror was a victim of last winter's prolonged newspaper strike. Actually, the owners had been looking for an excuse to close down the paper for years, and the strike simply came along at a useful moment. In the past three years the rapidly fading Hearst empire has had a hand in the deaths of half a dozen large dailies, including the Boston Evening American and the Los Angeles Examiner.

New York had twelve daily newspapers of general circulation in 1930; now it has six. Despite the rising number of surburban newspapers, the trend toward one-newspaper towns is clear and dangerous. The economics of journalism being what they are, the future looks bleak. Ask not for whom the Mirror folds; it folds for thee.