Founded in 1919, the New York Daily News was the first successful tabloid newspaper in the United States. During the 1920s it attracted readers with sensational coverage of crime and violence, and lurid photographs. In addition to its main city news coverage, it offered a wide variety of entertainment features, including celebrity gossip, classified ads, comics, and sports. Its success continued into the 1930s and 1940s, with a peak circulation of 2.4 million daily copies in 1947.
During World War II the News found abundant subject matter for its pages, 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 latter’s abdication). The paper also focused on photography; it was an early user of the Associated Press wirephoto service in the 1930s and developed a large staff of photographers. The News also established WPIX-TV, whose call letters were derived from the paper’s nickname as “New York’s Picture Newspaper,” and still operates its television station in its former Daily News Building.
In the 1980s, the News began losing money. By the mid-1990s, it was a $70 million loss each quarter. Despite this, its parent company refused to close the newspaper altogether, which would have cost it tens of millions in severance pay and pensions. Instead, the News was bought in March 1991 by controversial British media mogul Robert Maxwell. Maxwell attempted to restore the newspaper’s profit potential by negotiating contracts with the News’s ten unions, which had been striking since October 1990.
The Daily News began to make changes in order to compete with USA Today, which was rapidly gaining ground as the nation’s largest morning newspaper. In the fall of 1993, Zuckerman invested $60 million in new color presses for the News to bring it up to speed with its competitors. The News repositioned itself as a serious tabloid, and by 1995 it was once again profitable.
The Daily News remains a major source of local news for the city and its suburbs, as well as national and international events. Its award-winning writers, columnists and opinion formers provide the very best in live coverage of national and local news, New York exclusives and politics. No one covers the Yankees, Mets and Jets like the Daily News! In addition to its regular sections, the News also publishes a number of special issues each year in collaboration with Yale’s cultural centers and affiliated student groups. These include the Yale-Harvard Game Day Issue, the Commencement Issue and the First Year Issue. The News is printed Monday through Friday during the academic year, and distributes on Saturday and Sunday. Each article contains comprehension and critical thinking questions for students, which can be found in the “Background” and “Resources” sections below each question. Each weekly issue also includes a curated collection of video clips, maps and links that further enhance the reader’s understanding of the story. Each article also offers an embedded quiz that allows readers to test their knowledge of the topic.