The Yale Daily News is the nation’s oldest college newspaper. It publishes Monday through Friday during the academic year and serves the Yale and New Haven communities. Each week the newspaper features a mix of national and local news, sports, celebrity gossip and politics as well as editorials and letters to the editor. The News also produces several special issues each year, including the Yale-Harvard Game Day Issue, Commencement Issue and First Year Issue. The newspaper is financially and editorially independent of the university.
The Daily News was founded in 1919 as the Illustrated Daily News by Joseph Medill Patterson. It was the first tabloid daily in the United States and attracted readers with sensational coverage of crime, scandal, and violence, lurid photographs, and cartoons. By the 1930s it was the most read daily newspaper in the United States and in its heyday had a circulation of more than two million.
In the late 20th century it was locked in a circulation battle with its rival, the New York Post, and saw its readership diminish. By the 21st century it was owned by Mortimer B. Zuckerman and was still one of the most popular newspapers in the United States, although its circulation remained much lower than it had been in its heyday.
In addition to its extensive live national and local news coverage, the Daily News features New York exclusives, celebrity gossip, obituaries, classified ads, comics and a sports section. It is renowned for its photography and for having the best New York City sports coverage, especially of the Yankees, Mets, and Giants. Its journalists have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer Prizes. The Daily News is considered left-leaning, though it has tried to maintain objectivity, avoiding overt partisanship. The paper has had some controversy over its treatment of Muslims and immigrants. The paper is headquartered in the historic Daily News Building at 220 East 42nd Street (also known as Manhattan West) designed by John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood and featuring a giant globe in its lobby.