It’s hard to argue that the New York Post is exactly what it once was.

After Rupert Murdoch bought it and remade it in his Fleet Street image in 1976, the city woke up each morning faced with its brazen, often hilarious front page (a.k.a. “the wood”) and the fearsome, must-read “Page Six” gossip column. Everybody read it, from cop to CEO, and for decades it was the paper of record for the city’s id, helping set the agenda for the rest of the coverage, from glossy magazines to the nightly news, in the media capital of the world. Today, with information and outrage coming from a million different directions into your phones, that power is less so; the Post can often feel like it is playing catch-up to the internet. But by becoming more of a national tabloid — with lots of gossip, scandal, and right-wing spin — it’s doing better than most local newspapers, and even, in recent years, has claimed to be profitable.

Last month, I met up with Susan Mulcahy and Frank DiGiacomo, two New York Post veterans — Mulcahy from 1978 to 1985, DiGiacomo from the late 1980s to 1993 — who are out today with a 528-page oral history of the Post. We chatted over coffee at the Odeon, where copies of the New York Times, the Daily News, and, naturally, the Post were proudly — and somewhat anachronistically — displayed on the restaurant’s magazine rack, throwbacks to an era when everybody wasn’t just staring at their screens. Their book, Paper of Wreckage: The Rogues, Renegades, Wiseguys, Wankers, and Relentless Reporters Who Redefined American Media, tells the story of the Post during the Murdoch era through the voices of more than 230 current and former staffers who lived it. (Read an excerpt here.) “I feel like we’ve got sort of the pros, cons, the good, bad, and the ugly,” says DiGiacomo, whose oral history of “Page Six” for Vanity Fair in 2004 formed the basis for part of the book project, which was originally Mulcahy’s idea.

You’re both quoted in your own oral history.

Frank DiGiacomo:
Yeah, well, we were kind of inspired by the [George] Plimpton book on Edie Sedgwick. And he’s in that.

Susan Mulcahy:
We didn’t want to put too much of ourselves in. Several of my quotes in our book are from Frank’s Vanity Fair piece. Then there were a couple places where we were putting this whole thing together about outrageous Steve Dunleavy drunk stories. And Frank and I are talking about it. I’m like, “I’ve got one. I’m going swimming at this health club and Dunleavy …” Then Frank had a very different experience covering Trump than I did because it was so much later. So that was appropriate for him to put in his experience covering Trump. I don’t think we’re in it that much.

When did you work at the Post?

Mulcahy:
I was there in ’78, so I wasn’t there when he first bought the paper, but I was there a year later. There were a lot of things I liked about working there, but there were many things I hated and I wanted to get out. At a certain point, I was trapped. I left town for ten years in part because I just felt like I was typecast by New York. So it just was like “Page Six,” “Page Six,” “Page Six.” But there was some of it, the political incorrectness, yes, some of it was offensive, but some of it was kind of funny … There were also no women in positions of power in the Murdoch era. It was all guys.

DiGiacomo:
I was hired for a tryout on “Page Six,” and I was part time forever.

What was it like then?

DiGiacomo:
Working on “Page Six,” you get this map of the power grid of the city and you see who’s pulling strings where. I don’t think I could have had the career that I had afterward if not because of that. I knew who to call. I had a huge rolodex, and it just was good. I mean, working for [longtime “Page Six” editor] Richard Johnson, who is a very underrated editor and a very funny guy to work for. People would call him, and he goes, “I got it,........

© Daily Intelligencer