Founded in 1919, the Daily News considers itself “New York’s hometown newspaper,” delivering city coverage and more to everyday New Yorkers. It is known for its zesty headlines (perhaps most famously, “Ford to City: Drop Dead” in 1975) and star columnists like Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill and Liz Smith. In recent years, the paper has partnered with ProPublica on a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigations, including one that showed authorities were using an obscure law to evict hundreds of families from their homes.
In the first half of the 20th century, the Daily News established itself as one of the country’s largest newspapers, with its circulation exceeding one million copies a day in its peak. Its success benefited from the popularity of the tabloid format and its ability to reach many readers on the city’s subway system, where its smaller size and layout were easier to handle than those of more traditional newspapers. Its content attracted a large and diverse readership, with coverage of crime, scandal, and titillation; prominent photographs; classified ads; a sports section; comics; and a variety of entertainment features.
The Daily News was bought by the Tribune Company in 1985, but the paper’s unionized printing workers staged a five-month strike in 1990 that drove circulation to below 800,000 daily copies—about a third of its heyday. The paper survived the strike with the help of non-union replacement workers, but by the end of the year, the Daily News was losing nearly a million dollars a week in revenue.
In 1995, the Daily News was sold to News Corp., which also owned the New York Post and Fox News Channel. Despite its high profile, the paper has struggled to maintain its dominance in New York’s media market, battling a burgeoning online competition and falling advertising revenues. In 2016, the Daily News saw its lowest print circulation in a century.
A few months later, the newspaper won its first Pulitzer Prize in a decade for exposing how city officials used an obscure law to evict hundreds from their homes. In 2017, the News partnered with ProPublica on another Pulitzer-winning investigation, showing how police and fire departments had been targeting the families of homeless people for arrest. The investigation was called “A Family Apart” and won the newspaper a public service award, along with the paper’s editor-in-chief and several other staffers.
The Yale Daily News is the oldest college newspaper in the United States and is published Monday through Friday during the academic year. The News is a student-run, noncommercial publication with editorial and financial independence from the administration. The News is committed to diversity and inclusion and collaborates with the campus community to produce special issues each year, including a Yale-Harvard game day issue, the Commencement Issue, and the First Year Issue. The News also publishes a Friday supplement, WKND, as well as special issues celebrating Indigenous, Black, Latinx and Asian American communities in collaboration with Yale’s cultural centers and affiliated student groups.