The Daily News
In its 20th century heyday, the Daily News was a brawny metro tabloid that thrived when it dug into crime and corruption. It inspired the pulp comic that starred Clark Kent and Lois Lane, and it won Pulitzer Prizes for commentary, feature writing and international reporting. The paper still boasts the 18th-highest weekday newspaper circulation in America. In addition to intense city news coverage, it includes celebrity gossip, classified ads, comics and sports.
The News also maintains local bureaus in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens; at City Hall, inside One Police Plaza; and at many state and federal courthouses throughout the metropolitan area. It has a satellite office in Midtown Manhattan and publishes a Sunday edition, the Sunday News. The News has also owned a television station, WPIX (Channel 11 in New York City), since 1948. The call letters were derived from the newspaper’s nickname, “New York’s Picture Newspaper,” and the television station remains in its original Daily News Building on West 33rd Street.
From its founding in 1919, the newspaper emphasized sensational coverage of crime and scandal. It was the first successful tabloid in the United States, and its headquarters at 450 West 33rd Street straddled railroad tracks that led to Pennsylvania Station. The News became an early user of the Associated Press wire photo service and built a large staff of photographers. In the 1920s, it attracted readers by emphasizing political wrongdoing like the Teapot Dome scandal and social intrigue such as the romance between Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII that led to his abdication.
It was a ferocious competitor to its even more sensational rival, the New York Post, and in the 1940s through the 1960s it espoused conservative populism. By the 1970s, however, the paper began shifting its stance toward a more centrist and high-minded position. It won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1992 for its exposé of police corruption and the abuse of eviction rules.
The newspaper is currently owned by Tribune Publishing, which acquired it from Mortimer Zuckerman in 1993. Before the coronavirus pandemic, it was rumored that hedge fund Alden Global Capital might take over the newspaper chain. The potential of the News being sold prompted some of its employees to start campaigns calling for local benefactors to “save” their newspapers.
In addition to its flagship publication, the Daily News, the company publishes the Yale Daily News, America’s oldest college newspaper. The paper is independent from both the university and its administration and produces a daily newspaper Monday through Friday during the academic year. The Daily News also publishes special issues such as the Yale-Harvard Game Day Issue, the Commencement Issue and the First Year Issue.