The Daily News
Founded in 1919, the Daily News is an American tabloid newspaper based in Jersey City, New Jersey. The News is notable for being the first U.S. daily printed in a tabloid format, and for having reached its peak circulation in 1947 of 2.4 million copies per day. It is still published today. The News is the oldest continuously running newspaper in the United States, and for much of its history its offices were in the landmark art deco Daily News Building in New York City. It has a reputation for being a staunch protector of First Amendment rights. In addition to its intense city news coverage, the News offers celebrity gossip, classified ads, and sports, and also publishes a weekly national insert called BET Weekend, in conjunction with Black Entertainment Television Inc. The newspaper’s website is updated several times a week and includes many blogs, forums, chat rooms, and polls.
At its height the Daily News was the biggest newspaper in the world, with a circulation of over two million daily and four million on Sunday. The paper was the leading tabloid in the United States for most of the 20th century. It had abundant subject matter to cover, including political wrongdoing such as the Teapot Dome scandal and social intrigue such as the romance between Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII that led to the monarch’s abdication. It also devoted substantial attention to photography, and was an early user of the Associated Press wirephoto service.
In the 1990s, however, the newspaper began to falter financially. In March 1991 its parent company, the Tribune Company, put it up for sale. In October of that year its ten unions went on strike in a dispute over changes to work rules. The Daily News negotiated an agreement with the Allied Printing Trades Council that allowed it to disregard lifetime job guarantees for 167 printers, but did not succeed in reaching an agreement with the largest union, the New York Typographical Union. In November 1992 Mortimer Zuckerman outbid Canadian publisher Conrad Black and purchased the newspaper for $60 million.
The News’s editorial board, led by editor-in-chief Martin Dunn, and chief reporter William Krenek developed a strong reputation for aggressively protecting First Amendment rights. In particular, they fought to open government records such as school board meeting minutes and to make information about pending death penalty cases public. The News became known as the “voice of the working class” in New York.
The newspaper also acquired a reputation for investigative journalism, exposing corruption in the City of New York and elsewhere. In one well-known instance, a Daily News reporter strapped a camera to his leg and photographed the execution of Ruth Snyder in the electric chair. The News was also the first to report on the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War. In 2021, an anonymous Yale College alumnus made a gift that enabled the digitization of the entire archive of the News for use on the Yale University website.