Daily News (New York)

Daily News

The August 7, 2010 front page
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Tabloid
Owner	Mortimer Zuckerman
Publisher	Mortimer Zuckerman
Founded	1919 (1919)
Headquarters	450 West 33rd Street New York, New York 10001, United States
Circulation	535,059 daily 674,104 Sunday[1]
Official website	nydailynews.com

The Daily News of New York City is the fifth most-widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 632,595, as of June 13, 2009.^[1] The first U.S. daily printed in tabloid form, it was founded in 1919, and as of 2007 is owned and run by Mortimer Zuckerman. It has won ten Pulitzer Prizes.^[2]

History

The Daily News was founded by Joseph Medill Patterson. He and his cousin, Robert R. McCormick were co-publishers of the Chicago Tribune and grandsons of Tribune founder Joseph Medill. When Patterson and McCormick could not agree on the editorial content of the Chicago paper, the two cousins decided at a meeting in Paris that Patterson set on the project of launching a Tribune-owned newspaper in New York. On his way back, Patterson met with Alfred Harmsworth, who was the Viscount Northcliffe and publisher of the Daily Mirror, London's tabloid newspaper. Impressed with the advantages of a tabloid, Patterson launched the Daily News on June 26, 1919.^[3]

The Daily News was not an immediate success, and by August 1919, the paper's circulation had dropped to 26,625.^[4] Still, New York's many subway commuters found the tabloid format easier to handle, and readership steadily grew. By the time of the paper's first anniversary in June 1920, circulation was over 100,000 and by 1925, over a million.

Daily News Building, John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, architects, rendering by Hugh Ferriss. The landmark, still standing as of 2008, housed the paper until the mid-1990s.

The News carried the slogan "New York's Picture Newspaper" from 1920 to 1991, for its emphasis on photographs, and a camera has been part of the newspaper's logo from day one. The paper's later slogan, developed from a 1985 ad campaign, is "New York's Hometown Newspaper", while another has been "The Eyes, the Ears, the Honest Voice of New York"). The Daily News continues to include large and prominent photographs, for news, entertainment and sports, as well as intense city news coverage, celebrity gossip, classified ads, comics, a sports section, and an opinion section.

Prominent sports cartoonists have included Bill Gallo, Bruce Stark and Ed Murawinski. Columnists have included Walter Kaner. Editorial cartoonists have included C. D. Batchelor.

In 1982, and again in the early 1990s during a newspaper strike, the Daily News almost went out of business. In the 1982 instance, the parent Tribune offered the tabloid up for sale. In 1991, millionaire Robert Maxwell offered financial assistance to The News to help it stay in business. When Maxwell died shortly thereafter, The News seceded from his publishing empire, which eventually splintered under questions about whether Maxwell had the financial backing to sustain it. After Maxwell's death in 1991, the paper was held together in bankruptcy by existing management, led by editor James Willse, who became interim publisher. Mort Zuckerman bought the paper in 1993.

From its founding until 1991, the Daily News was owned by the Tribune Company. The News established WPIX (Channel 11 in New York City), whose call letters were based on The News' nickname of New York's Picture Newspaper; and later bought what became WPIX-FM, which later became WQCD. The television station became a Tribune property outright in 1991; the radio station was purchased by Emmis Communications.

The News also maintains local bureaus in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, at City Hall, and within One Police Plaza.

Headquarters

Headquarters at 450 West 33rd Street

From its founding, it was based at 23 Park Place, a block from City Hall, and two blocks from Park Row, the traditional home of the city's newspaper trade. The cramped conditions demanded a much larger space for the growing newspaper.

From 1929 to 1995, The News was based in the landmark skyscraper at 220 East 42nd Street near Second Avenue, designed by John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood. The paper moved to 450 33rd Street in the mid-1990s, but the 42nd Street location is still known as The News Building and still features a giant globe and weather instruments in its lobby. (It was the model for the Daily Planet building of the first two Superman movies). Former News subsidiary WPIX-TV remains in the building. The new headquarters at 450 West 33rd Street, straddles the railroad tracks going into Pennsylvania Station is shared with television station WNET, and the Associated Press.

The paper has plans to leave West 33rd and move into lower Manhattan in 2011.

Notable contributors

Notable contributors have included:

• Chris Allbritton
• Lewis Beale
• Jimmy Breslin
• Juan Gonzalez
• Pete Hamill
• David Hinckley
• Ronan Keenan
• Mike Lupica
• John Melia
• Lars-Erik Nelson
• William Reel
• Ed Sullivan

Historic front pages

The "Drop Dead" cover (1975)

Looking west down 42nd street, the Daily News building is on the left.

The News is known for its often colorful and blunt front page headlines, several of which have achieved iconic status. Famous headlines from the Daily News include:

• Dead! (Picture of the execution of Ruth Snyder, 1928)
• Who's a bum! (describing the Brooklyn Dodgers winning the 1955 World Series, their only championship before Walter O'Malley's infamous relocation to California)
• Homo nest raided, queen bees are stinging mad (Report on the police raid of the Stonewall Inn)^[5]
• Rocky quits (Upon the resignation of Nelson Rockefeller as governor of New York in order to assume the chairmanship of the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans, November 1973)
• Ford to city: drop dead (bankruptcy of New York City government and the refusal of President Gerald Ford to give financial assistance to the city prompted this headline in 1975; the paper nonetheless endorsed him for President the next year)
• Top cop admits hanky panky (about the marital travails of then-Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward in 1984)
• Boulevard of death (referring to Queens Boulevard in Queens, where 72 people were killed in traffic accidents between 1993 and 2000)
• Cry baby (referring to then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich in 1995, for his shutting down the US government during budget talks)
• The boy who fooled New York (about a 13-year-old boy named Edwin Sabillon who ran away from his home in Honduras to New York, lying about his mother dying in Hurricane Mitch and him going to live with his father in New York. In actuality, his mother abandoned him and his father had died of AIDS months before, which he could not believe. August 31, 1999)
• Not my baby! (Picture of the grieving mother of a victim of Pan Am Flight 103)
• It's war (Picture of the second plane going into the World Trade Center, 2001)

Daily Planet

The Daily News served as the model for the Daily Planet in the Superman movies, beginning with Superman in 1978. The News Building stood in for the Daily Planet Building, with the large globe in the real-life lobby serving as a handy emblem for the Planet.

When Superman makes his public debut, the Planet carries the headline, Caped wonder stuns city," while Planet editor Perry White compares it to the other papers in Metropolis, which also seem to mirror the New York papers:

• The Metropolis Post, a tabloid: "It flies!"
• The Daily News, a tabloid, also resembling its New York namesake: "Look ma - no wires!"
• The Metropolis Times, a broadsheet: "Blue bomb buzzles metropolis".

See also

• Lloyd Grove, gossip columnist
• Media of New York City

References

External links

• Official website
• Photographic essay on the Daily News Building on 42nd Street

Notes