The Daily News
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The Daily News is a leading New York newspaper that covers local, national and international news. The paper is known for its unbiased content and a broad range of topics including politics, crime, and culture. It has a long history of producing many well-known and influential journalists, politicians, and public figures.
Founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson, The Daily News was once the largest newspaper in the United States. Today it has a circulation of over 3 million. The News was a major source of popular culture in the 1920s, publishing comics, fiction, and celebrity gossip. It also featured a robust city news section, intense sports coverage, and extensive classified ads. It has also been an early adopter of technology, with an extensive photo library and the first use of AP wirephoto in 1930.
In addition to its editorial content, The Daily News often carried controversial cartoons that satirized prominent political figures. Several of its authors went on to achieve fame in journalism and public life, such as William F. Buckley, John Hersey, Lan Samantha Chang, Sargent Shriver, and Strobe Talbott.
Its editorial stance emphasized the needs of “average citizens.” The newspaper’s readership was mostly middle-class and working class white ethnics, whom the paper characterized as god-fearing, patriotic, and content with their lot. The paper aimed to entertain them, empathize with them, assist them, and fight their perceived enemies.
The News was also a major voice for reactionary populism. Its editorials attacked bureaucracy, foreign policy, and taxes. It blamed “soft or effeminate” elites for America’s failure to assert its power over foreign nations, and it favored isolationist policies and an anti-communist worldview.
In its criticism of the federal government, The Daily News echoed the themes of National Review. But whereas National Review was intellectual and interventionist, the Daily News was populist and isolationist.
The News’s editorial line became more extreme after World War II, and it began to embrace the nativist views of its founder. The Daily News was a major influence on post-war American conservatism, and it can be seen as the journalistic parent of figures such as Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. It was also a key influence on the later rise of Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump. Its broader worldview of reactionary populism was more important than its particular policies, however, and this makes the Daily News more relevant to the genealogy of modern American conservatism than National Review.