Founded in 1919, the Daily News was the first successful tabloid newspaper in America. Initially named the Illustrated Daily News, it attracted readers with sensational coverage of crime and scandal, lurid photographs, and cartoons. The paper’s success led its publisher, Joseph Medill Patterson, to commission architects Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells to design a massive building on Park Place that would become known as the Daily News Building. Its utilitarian appearance was later used as inspiration for the fictional Daily Planet building in the Superman film franchise.
The Daily News’ reputation for being a tough-minded adversary to the political establishment was solidified in 1975 with what would be its most famous headline ever: After President Gerald Ford’s veto of a city bankruptcy bailout, the front page of the Daily News read, “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD”. The News remained the most widely-read New York newspaper throughout the 20th century, although it began to drift from its traditionally conservative roots, eventually declaring itself a “flexibly centrist” publication.
As the Daily News continued to lose readership to online news sources, it became increasingly reliant on political events to fill its pages. In the early 21st century, the emergence of Donald Trump as a major political player offered the Daily News an opportunity to re-establish itself among New York City’s most-viewed media outlets. The News rolled out a series of provocative front-page headlines targeting Trump and other high-profile politicians, including an image of the Statue of Liberty giving Republican senator Ted Cruz the middle finger, and rehashing its most famous headline from the past: “TRUMP TO WORLD: DROP DEAD”.
Amid the decline of print journalism in the wake of the digital age, the Daily News continued to publish daily news stories on its website. It also published a monthly insert called BET Weekend, which focused on issues of interest to black America and was highly profitable.
Despite these successes, the financial woes of the Daily News ultimately led to its sale in 1992 to Tronc, a Chicago-based media company. In the years that followed, the Daily News under its various editors-in-chief lost its dominant position in the local New York market to other rivals. By 2017, the newspaper was losing $115 million a month and had slipped below the one-million-reader mark. Its longtime editor, Martin Gottlieb, was fired for “insubordination” and its editorial positions were reorganized. The Daily News was acquired again by Tronc in 2021. Each day, The Week provides the antidote to news overload with concise, twice-daily updates curated by our editors. Each update is a snapshot of the world’s most trusted news sources, delivered to your inbox, app or mobile device. Subscribe now to make sense of the news. You can cancel anytime.
