I have never read the NY Post but from what you write I assume it is right-wing, sort of the Fox Network of print? I think the right has a natural advantage when it comes to being funny while delivering news: you mock what you do not understand and most things are incomprehensible these days for the regular guy (or even to the leftist: we have succumbed to using their terms such as "politically correct"). Add to that the gratuitous insults of the stuff that the regular guy believes in. A friend of mine once claimed that all humour is at the cost of somebody (I gave him a joke that I thought was not so: "1+1=2 even for large values of 1", but he responded that that is a joke about mathematical terminology and therefore mathematicians). And we on the left do not like to mock and ridicule people (*). We are left with the option of mocking the powerful among the right -- which I guess is what Jon Stewart et al do, and they are roaringly successful. I think it takes a lot of talent. Perhaps a few of you on this list are capable of it (Dennis seems to do a good job of it, and Woj can compete with Carrol for the Rooney spot, but you -- Doug -- are too much of a Chomsky type I am afraid ;-) ... not to forget the recent discussion on the implications of the Turkish March in Beethoven's compositions or whatever the hell that was all about ;-)).
(*) It is also a natural advantage of the right that even when they mock a large group the listener perceives himself to be the mocker, not the mocked, though the majority of them (the listeners) belong in the latter group. Additionally, society has conditioned people to accept certain forms of mockery (women are self-mocking or tolerant of jokes about make-up or some such and men about not asking for directions, etc) which play into right style polemics. On the other hand, even when the left carefully targets those it mocks (say the Pope rather than Christianity, or something even more clearly distinguishable) the listener perceives it as a personal insult.
CB points out that if mainstream media is in decline then a mainstream format seems the wrong way to go. The question then is: what attracts and retains eyeballs/ears? Right-wing talk radio dominates the air waves perhaps because of the lack of choice and the captive audience in cars? Websites do not have such lock-ins or advantages, but they have the viral propagation and adoption that is becoming the most abiding feature of the Internet. Julio Huato asked about The Onion -- do they still have the sort of mass popularity they enjoyed a few years ago? I stopped reding them a while ago since they stopped being funny (Joanna thinks otherwise). How is their print publication doing?
--ravi