Also this issue:

How Ed Won
The day Democrats finally chose a Philly boy.
-Daniel Brook and Daryl Gale

Andy Dandy, Babette Better

The Bell Curve
City Paper's weekly gauge of Philly's Quality of Life

May 23-29, 2002

on media

Post Haste

by Howard Altman

Like mushrooms popping up after a rainstorm, New York Post honor boxes began appearing all over Philadelphia last week.

"We are America's fastest-growing paper, and we wanted to keep it that way," explains John Amann, vice president of circulation for the New York tabloid.

Amann says that the Post placed about 50 honor boxes around Philly, containing about 1,000 papers every day. In addition to the honor boxes, Amann says the New York Post is now available via home delivery in Philadelphia "for the first time ever."

The aim, he says, is not to take circulation away from the Philadelphia Daily News, but to make the Post easier to get for commuters to New York and New Jersey.

"We are looking to grow our presence a little more," says Amann. "We are not attacking the local papers; we are not trying to take anything away from anyone. We have grown our circulation by more than 75,000 copies last year, and both the [New York] Times and the [New York] Daily News showed increases as well, so we are not expanding at the expense of others. I doubt Philadelphia newspapers will be hurt."

Amann adds that "there will be no additional Philly coverage" in the Post.

Amann says the paper is being distributed by Mitchell's newspaper delivery service and that potential subscribers are being solicited by telemarketers. Amann would not say how many home-delivery customers the Post is aiming for.

Ellen Foley, managing editor of the Philadelphia Daily News, says she is not concerned by the Post's incursion.

"Clearly, I don't feel they will have any local coverage," says Foley. "We are hard to beat."

Foley says she sees the Post's move "as more of an effort to have a presence than some sort of new massive initiative to take market away from another publication."

Foley adds that "it would be silly for [the Post] to try and do that. The Daily News owns the city's daily news market, and our loyal readers vote with their 60 cents a day."

Not only is she not concerned about the Post, but Foley says she is quite enthused about the most recent circulation numbers, a first-quarter average of 155,677 copies sold per day, a 2.11 percent increase from the first quarter of 2001.

"The first quarter looked pretty darn good," says Foley. "We work very hard at putting out a paper every day that people will buy and develop a loyalty to. Clearly, we are doing a great job at that, and I don't think the New York Post has a snowball's chance in hell of challenging that."