NEW YORK — Kerry Burke isn't your average reality television star.
To begin with, the 43-year-old reporter with a heavy Dorchester, Mass., accent and rumpled white shirts doesn't resemble the glossy, striving characters that dominate most shows of the genre. In fact, the self-described "blue-collar boy" recoils at the thought of being on camera. He's not even planning on watching his television debut Monday on "Tabloid Wars," Bravo's new "docu-series" about the inner workings of the New York Daily News.
"I'm going to work," declared Burke, who covers breaking news -- i.e., "murder and mayhem" -- on the late shift for the paper. "That's what I do. I'm going to chase stories, like I always do."
Burke's unrelenting focus on getting the story is one of the central conceits of "Tabloid Wars," a six-episode series that takes viewers inside the manic, hurly-burly world of a New York tabloid. The program, filmed documentary-style over three months last summer, is in many ways a nostalgic paean to a rapidly disappearing phenomenon: the local newspaper war. It may also be the most positive view of newspaper types on TV since the days of "Lou Grant."
New York City, with three major daily newspapers, is one of the last cities in America where print reporters are engaged in a fierce, day-in and day-out competition over local stories. The rivalry is particularly acute between the two tabloids, the Daily News and the New York Post, which never miss an opportunity to take a swipe at each another.
In recent years, the circulation gap between the papers has narrowed, with the News now selling an average of 708,477 papers on weekdays to the Post's 673,379. Quipped Col Allan, editor in chief of the Post: "If I look at the circulation trajectories of both papers, I would call the Daily News series 'Tabloid Surrender.' " (Daily News editors note that the Post charges half as much and has fewer readers.)
The heated climate means that every story -- whether a tawdry celebrity antic or brutal urban crime, the subjects of the first episodes -- is a race to be first. "Tabloid Wars" spotlights the daily adrenaline-filled contest, following Daily News reporters as they rush to nail down details of such stories as the thievery of actor Robert DeNiro's nanny, a racially motivated beating in Howard Beach, Queens, and a police shooting in Harlem with a doggedness reminiscent of Michael Keaton's character in "The Paper," the 1994 film that itself was loosely based on the Daily News.
