In its 20th-century heyday, the Daily News was a brawny metro tabloid that thrived by digging into crime and corruption. It was the model for The Daily Planet, the paper depicted in the first two Superman films, and its reporters won Pulitzer prizes in commentary, feature writing and international reporting. Today the Daily News remains an important source of local news and information. Its website offers a full range of multimedia features, and its print edition continues to deliver intense city news coverage and celebrity gossip. It also includes comics, a sports section and an opinion page.
The Daily News was founded in 1919 as the Illustrated Daily News, making it the first tabloid newspaper published in the United States. It reached its peak circulation in 1947, at 2.4 million copies per day. Today it has a smaller circulation, but remains one of the top-selling newspapers in the country. The New York Times and the New York Post are the only other major metropolitan newspapers with higher average weekday circulations.
Until recently, the News struggled with declining advertising revenue and a sagging readership. In the fall of 2017, it was announced that publisher Mortimer Zuckerman was selling the paper to Tronc, a Chicago-based media company. The deal was completed in February 2018, and the Daily News’s editorial staff relocated to 4 New York Plaza.
Since that time, the News has emphasized a mix of breaking news and feature articles, with an emphasis on local stories. It has reported on a variety of issues, including the coronavirus pandemic and the influx of immigrants. The paper has also conducted lengthy investigations into police misconduct, including the case of the city’s most notorious gangster, and into the city’s troubled schools.
The Daily News has an excellent record of factual reporting, but it does tend to skew left in its editorial content. In fact, it is rated as Skewed Left in bias by Ad Fontes Media, which evaluates over 2,500 news sources on their bias and reliability.
The Yale Daily News Historical Archive is an online resource of the New York Daily News and its predecessors. The archive contains thousands of pages of full-text articles, many of which are searchable by keyword or date. This resource is available free of charge, and is updated regularly as new issues are published. The archive is maintained by the Yale University Library. The Library gratefully acknowledges the generous support of an anonymous alumnus in the development of this site and its ongoing maintenance and preservation. Permission to reproduce the material in this archive must be obtained from the Library’s Rights and Permissions department. For more information, see the YDN Rights and Permissions web page.
