National Comes Charging Out of the Starting Gates

In its first time at bat Wednesday, the National apparently hit a grand slam as residents of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago raced to buy the first daily newspaper to take sports from the back pages to the front page--and every other one, too.

The National’s Los Angeles bureau chief, Steve Clow, said the paper’s West Los Angeles office has been barraged with telephone calls from people searching for copies of the tabloid.

“We’ve gotten a lot of calls from people who want it and can’t get it,” Clow said. “The only thing I know is I threw my daughter in the car at 7:15 this morning, went down to the newsstand . . . and the guy had only three left” of 150 papers delivered early Wednesday.

The National, which printed 250,000 copies Wednesday, sold out at more than 1,500 newsstands in New York and Chicago, but results were not yet available for Los Angeles, said Steve Hammond, the National’s spokesman in New York.

In New York and Chicago, the National is being carried primarily at newsstands. But in far-flung, car-dependent Los Angeles, the company is relying more on retail outlets, such as 7-Elevens and liquor stores, as well as newspaper vending machines, said circulation director Diane Morgenthaler.

In addition, thousands of copies of the National were handed out free Wednesday throughout Los Angeles.

Sales were brisk Wednesday at about 2,200 outlets in Los Angeles County, said Dick Mader, whose Culver City-based Mader News handles distribution of the National in much of the county. It is also being sold in Orange County and small sections of Riverside and Ventura counties.

“We got 35,000 copies,” Mader said. “We probably could have sold double what we got.”

But bets are still being placed on whether the National’s eagle logo will enjoy a long flight.

“We’re selling them by the handful,” said Max, owner of Centerfold News in the Fairfax District, who declined to give his full name. But he added that many probably are being purchased for souvenirs. “There are a lot of people who buy the first of everything hoping it will be worth three times as much in 10 years.”