The New York Daily News is a morning tabloid newspaper founded in 1919, the first successful one in the United States. It attracted readers with sensational pictorial coverage of crime, scandal, and violence, as well as lurid photographs and cartoons. By the 1940s its circulation topped two million, making it the eleventh highest-circulation paper in the world.
At that time it was locked in a fierce rivalry with the even more sensational rival tabloid New York Post, and both papers competed for front-page attention. Its success in the 1930s and 1940s was due largely to its willingness to go further than its competitors in pursuing attention-grabbing stories, such as when it smuggled a camera into an execution cell in 1928, and captured a photo of Ruth Snyder mid-electrocution—the next day’s Daily News carried the headline “DEAD!”
By the 1950s the paper had begun to lose ground to its more sophisticated rivals, but it remained one of the country’s top-selling newspapers, with its circulation less than half its 1920s peak. By the 1980s the Daily News was in decline and the newspaper industry was facing an existential crisis, with many major publishers struggling to make a profit.
In 1991, controversial British media mogul Robert Maxwell bought the newspaper from Tribune Company, along with the Daily Mirror and other properties. He made several attempts to turn around the newspaper, including hiring Ed Sullivan, former editor of the rival London Sunday Times, as publisher. He also negotiated with the News’s unions to bring an end to a 147-day strike.
Throughout the 1990s, the Daily News continued to struggle financially and its reputation suffered from its inability to compete with the more professional journalism of competing newspapers. In 1995, the newspaper moved out of its iconic headquarters at 220 East 42nd Street, an Art Deco building designed by John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood that resembled a globe with weather instruments. It now resides at 450 West 33rd Street (known as Manhattan West) and houses a TV station, WPIX.
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