The Daily News is an American tabloid newspaper founded in 1919. The paper is the oldest and largest continually published daily newspaper in the United States, with a circulation of over 1.7 million copies. It is owned by Tronc, the Tribune Company’s New York City-based newspaper division. The newspaper is known for its large and prominent photographs, sensational stories of crime, scandal, and violence, celebrity gossip, and cartoons. It also features intense city news coverage, classified ads, and sports news. The Daily News is the largest newspaper in the world based on paid subscriptions, and its editorial page is one of the most influential in the country.
The New York Daily News was the first successful tabloid in America. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson, who had been publisher of the Chicago Tribune. The two newspapers had conflicted over policy, and Patterson decided to launch a competitor in the Big Apple.
Initially, the Daily News attracted readers with its sensational news of crime and scandal and its lurid photography. It quickly became the largest newspaper in the country. During the Roaring Twenties, its circulation exceeded 1.5 million. By the late 1930s, the Daily News was the most widely read newspaper in the world. The paper was a major influence on other tabloids, which soon dominated the national news market.
By the 1980s, the newspaper was losing money. It had yielded to union demands regarding rules, job numbers and overtime. Eventually, the Daily News was operating at a loss of $1 million a month. The newspaper’s parent company, the Tribune Publishing Company, offered it for sale. But the price was too high, and closing the newspaper was not an option, since severance pay and pensions would have cost more than $100 million.
In 1985, the Daily News hired former Tribune publisher Robert Maxwell as editor-in-chief. Maxwell successfully negotiated with the newspaper’s unions and brought an end to a 147-day strike, which had depressed circulation. However, the Daily News still lost millions of dollars each year, and its reputation for bold journalism was in decline.
Ultimately, the Daily News was saved by a Chicago media mogul named Mort Zuckerman. In 1993, he invested $60 million in color presses that enabled the Daily News to match the visual quality of USA Today, its most significant rival. The investment paid off, and the Daily News returned to profitability.
The Daily News is the only major New York newspaper that continues to be printed on a full-color offset printing press. It is the only New York paper that publishes a separate insert for African Americans, BET Weekend, and a monthly section for Caribbean readers.
The Daily News also has a weekly magazine known as the Yale Daily News and several special issues each year, including the Yale-Harvard game day issue, the commencement issue, and the first year issue. The Daily News is also the nation’s oldest college newspaper. It is financially and editorially independent of the university.