Daily News is a New York City newspaper that covers national and local news, politics, entertainment, celebrity gossip, sports, and more. Its award-winning writers, columnists and opinion formers bring you the latest from the greatest city on Earth. No one does New York City like the Daily News.
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Founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson, the publisher of Chicago’s Tribune newspaper, the Daily News was designed to be “a brassy pictorial tabloid for America and for New York.” It was the first U.S. daily printed in tabloid format and reached its peak circulation of 2.4 million copies a day in 1947. Throughout its long run as one of the nation’s top-selling newspapers, the Daily News engaged in a tumultuous relationship with the rival New York Post. Despite the fact that the two papers shared a similar owner (and at times an editor), each publication fiercely competed with the other in terms of headlines and content.
In 1975, the Daily News managed to grab the attention of the city with its screamer headline, “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” While it was no longer able to capture the same level of public interest as it had in the past, the Daily News continued to be a prominent news source.
In the 1990s, the Daily News was purchased by publisher Mortimer Zuckerman in an attempt to rediscover its earning potential and reposition it as a “serious tabloid.” He invested $60 million towards color presses, allowing the newspaper to match the visual quality of USA Today, the largest national daily at the time. Zuckerman also established the News’ first television station, WPIX, in 1996. The News moved out of its historic art deco New York City headquarters, the Daily News Building (220 East 42nd Street, designed by John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood) in 1995 to a single-story office at 450 West 33rd Street, known locally as Manhattan West.
In 2017, the Daily News found itself in a precarious position. Circulation had halved in the previous year, and by September of that same year it was announced that Tronc (a division of Tribune Publishing Company, at that point briefly rebranded as “Tronc”) had bought the Daily News for $1. Over the next few months, Tronc would embark on a firing spree, cutting the editorial staff by more than half. As of late, the Daily News has struggled to regain its footing among the city’s major news outlets.