In 1919, Joseph Medill Patterson founded the Daily News in New York City as a tabloid with an aggressively pro-America editorial policy. The newspaper gained a following amongst the city’s commuters, who found its smaller size easier to handle and navigate during busy subway rides. The paper also capitalized on titillating and scandalous stories and reader contests. While the Daily News struggled to compete with its rivals, including the New York Post and the Times, by the end of the Roaring Twenties it had reached one million daily circulations.
In the 1930s, the Daily News moved from Park Place to 220 East 42nd Street, an official city and national landmark designed by Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, and modeled after the Chicago Tribune tower. The News Building was a critical success for the newspaper, and it also served as inspiration for the Daily Planet building in the Superman movies. The building remained the Daily News headquarters until 1995, when it was replaced by 5 Manhattan West.
By the 1970s, the Daily News was struggling financially. It had been under constant pressure to yield to union demands regarding rules, staff numbers and overtime, and by the 1980s it was losing about a million dollars a month. The Tribune Company, the News’s parent company, even considered closing the newspaper entirely. However, severance pay and pensions for hundreds of employees would have cost the Tribune hundreds of millions of dollars.
The News’s fortunes finally began to turn in the late 1980s, with the hiring of businessman Mortimer Zuckerman as chairman and copublisher. The paper was repositioned as a “serious tabloid,” and in the fall of 1993 Zuckerman invested $60 million in color presses, allowing the Daily News to match the visual quality of USA Today, which by now had become the nation’s largest newspaper.
By the early 1990s, the News was back in profit. But it was only a matter of time before the newspaper’s unions demanded that the newspaper be reorganized to cut costs and eliminate layoffs, as well as make major concessions on wages. In October of 1990, the News’ ten unions went on strike, costing the newspaper an estimated $70 million in revenue in just the fourth quarter alone.
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