New York Daily News
The New York Daily News, officially titled the Daily News, is an American newspaper based in Jersey City, New Jersey. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson in New York City as the Illustrated Daily News.
For the newspaper published between 1855 and 1906, see New York Daily News (19th century).Type
Daily News Enterprises
Andrew Julien (interim)[1]
June 24, 1919 (as Illustrated Daily News)
125 Theodore Conrad Drive, Jersey City, New Jersey, 07305
United States
45,730 average print circulation[4]
It was the first U.S. daily printed in tabloid format. It reached its peak circulation in 1947, at 2.4 million copies a day. As of 2019, it was the eleventh-highest circulated newspaper in the United States. (Today's Daily News is not connected to the earlier New York Daily News, which shut down in 1906.) For much of the 20th century, the paper operated out of the historic art deco Daily News Building with its large globe in the lobby.
The Daily News is owned by parent company Tribune Publishing. This company was acquired by Alden Global Capital, which operates its media properties through Digital First Media, in May 2021.[5][6][7][8][9] After the Alden acquisition, alone among the newspapers acquired from Tribune Publishing, the Daily News property was spun off into a separate subsidiary called Daily News Enterprises.[10]
Editorial stance and style[edit]
The New York Times journalist Alan Feuer said the Daily News focuses heavily on "deep sourcing and doorstep reporting", providing city-centered "crime reportage and hard-hitting coverage of public issues [...] rather than portraying New York through the partisan divide between liberals and conservatives".[30] According to Feuer, the paper is known for "speaking to and for the city's working class" and for "its crusades against municipal misconduct".[30]
The New York Times has described the Daily News's editorial stance as "flexibly centrist"[30] with a "high-minded, if populist, legacy".[31] In contrast to its sister publication, the Chicago Tribune, the Daily News was pro-Roosevelt, endorsing him in 1932, 1936, and 1940. It broke from the president, however, in 1941 over foreign policy.[32] From the 1940s through the 1960s, the Daily News espoused conservative populism.[33] By the mid-1970s however, it began shifting its stance, and during the 1990s, it gained a reputation as a moderately liberal alternative to the right-wing Post (which until 1980 had been a Democratic bastion).
The newspaper endorsed Republican George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election,[34] Democrat Barack Obama in 2008,[35] Republican Mitt Romney in 2012,[36] Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016,[37] and Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.[38]
Printing facilities[edit]
In 1993, the Daily News consolidated its printing facilities near Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey.[43][44]
In 2009, the paper spent $150 million on printing presses as part of its change to full-color photographs.[45][46]
In 2011, the company spent $100 million to buy three new presses, using a $41.7 million Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit from the State of New Jersey.[47]
In 2022, the company plans to close its Jersey City printing plant and outsource its printing operations to North Jersey Media Group.[48]
Pulitzer Prizes[edit]
The Daily News has won eleven Pulitzer Prizes.[49]
In 1998, Daily News columnist Mike McAlary won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his multi-part series of columns (published in 1997) on Abner Louima, who was sodomized and tortured by New York City police officers.[50]
In 2007, the News' editorial board, which comprised Arthur Browne, Beverly Weintraub, and Heidi Evans,[51] won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing for a series of thirteen editorials, published over five months, that detailed how more than 12,000 rescue workers who responded after the September 11 attacks had become ill from toxins in the air.[52] The Pulitzer citation said that the award was given to the paper "for its compassionate and compelling editorials on behalf of Ground Zero workers, whose health problems were neglected by the city and the nation."[52]
In 2017, the Daily News was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in collaboration with non-profit ProPublica "for uncovering, primarily through the work of reporter Sarah Ryley, widespread abuse of eviction rules by the police to oust hundreds of people, most of them poor minorities."[53]
Noteworthy front pages[edit]
In 1928, a News reporter strapped a small camera to his leg, and shot a photo of Ruth Snyder being executed in the electric chair.[54] The next day's newspaper carried the headline "DEAD!".
On October 29, 1975, President Gerald Ford gave a speech denying federal assistance to spare New York City from bankruptcy. The front page of the October 30, 1975 Daily News read: "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD".[55] Ford later said the headline had played a role in his losing the 1976 presidential election.[56]
On November 16, 1995, the Daily News front page displayed an illustration of Newt Gingrich as a baby in a diaper with the headline "Crybaby" following revelations that Gingrich had shut down the government in retaliation for a perceived snub from Bill Clinton aboard Air Force One.[57]
In the year leading up to the 2016 presidential election, the paper's headlines became more provocative, helping to rejuvenate it, and with more opinionated editorials with the aforementioned headlines, once again in an effort to demonstrate its place in the city's media.[58]
Following the 2015 San Bernardino shooting, in which 14 people were killed, the paper's front page displayed "GOD ISN'T FIXING THIS" along with tweets from Republican politicians offering thoughts and prayers.[59] The paper advocated for tighter gun laws, condemning what it described as "empty platitudes and angry rhetoric" rather than action "in response to the ongoing plague of gun violence in our country."[59][60] The provocative headline[59][60] received both praise and criticism.[61]
In January 2016, after Republican senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz of Texas disparaged "New York values" in a Republican primary debate, the News responded with a cover page headline reading "DROP DEAD, TED" and showing the Statue of Liberty giving the middle finger.[62]
Controversies[edit]
The Daily News supported the Iraq War.[63] On March 14, 2003, six days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Daily News reported "President Bush is targeting an aggressive, dangerous, psychotic dictator who has stockpiled weapons of mass destruction and would use them without compunction. ... With Saddam in power, there can be no peace. One argument you hear raised against war is fear of retaliation: America mustn't upset the terrorists. After 9/11, does this even need to be rebutted? Terrorists have killed thousands of Americans already and thirst for more. Fighting back is a necessity, unless people want the peace of the grave."[64]
On December 20, 2016, Daily News columnist Gersh Kuntzman compared the assassination of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, to the assassination of Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Jewish student Herschel Grynszpan, saying "justice has been served."[65] Russia has demanded an official apology from Daily News.
Since 2018, the Daily News has prevented internet users in the European Union from accessing its website, on grounds of missing data protection compliance.[66][67][68]
