New York Post

Overview

The New York Post is the newspaper used by the bounded source to show how tabloid framing turned the 1977 blackout into a national law-and-order story.

Current Profile

360. Fear City: New York in the 1970s places the Post shortly after Rupert Murdoch’s takeover, with crime, scandal, and confrontation central to its emerging tabloid style. Its “24 hours of terror” blackout framing sold additional copies and presented the disorder as evidence of permissiveness and civic breakdown. The newspaper therefore appears not merely as an observer but as an amplifier within Urban Crisis Cultural Feedback.

Key Characteristics

• It used a dramatic terror frame for blackout disorder.
• Its coverage foregrounded crime, scandal, and law-and-order politics.
• The blackout became a commercially successful tabloid event.
• Its framing competed with deprivation-based explanations of looting.
• It helped nationalize New York’s local crisis as a story about American urban failure.

Evidence

• Headline and sales: 360. Fear City: New York in the 1970s describes the “24 hours of terror” headline and increased circulation.
• Editorial direction: 360. Fear City: New York in the 1970s links the paper’s crime-and-scandal style to Murdoch’s recent takeover.
• Political meaning: 360. Fear City: New York in the 1970s places the Post within the conservative backlash against welfare and 1960s permissiveness.

Qualifications

The source summarizes selected coverage rather than systematically comparing the Post’s reporting, editorials, photography, and later corrections with other newspapers.

What Changed

• Established the Post as a commercial and political amplifier of the blackout’s law-and-order meaning.

Relationships

• Rupert Murdoch - owner associated with the paper’s tabloid turn.
• 1977 New York City Blackout - event the paper framed as terror.
• Urban Crisis Cultural Feedback - mechanism through which coverage reinforced the city’s dystopian image.
• Urban Disorder Explanation Conflict - interpretive conflict in which the paper favored criminal responsibility and social permissiveness.
• New York City - city whose crisis became the paper’s defining subject.