Founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, the Daily News was the first successful tabloid newspaper in the United States. Attracting readers with sensational crime, scandal and violence coverage and lurid photographs, the paper grew rapidly throughout the 1920s. It also attracted audiences with humor, cartoons and entertainment features. At its peak circulation in 1947, the Daily News had the highest number of daily newspaper readers in the country.
By the mid-1990s, under new editors-in-chief (first Pete Hamill and then Debby Krenek), the Daily News developed a reputation as a champion of the First Amendment as well as the rights of those who lived and worked in New York City, especially those who were deemed not to have a voice. The paper was credited with helping to bring about changes in criminal justice and police oversight in the city, and it won Pulitzer Prizes for E.R. Shipp’s pieces on welfare and race issues and Mike McAlary’s reporting on the police beating of Abner Louima.
The Daily News was once the largest newspaper in the world, with a circulation of 2.4 million a day in its peak year of 1947. However, as readers turned to online sources for information, the paper was unable to keep up with the competition and began to decline. In addition, its longtime owner, Charles H. Zuckerman, had been losing money on his newspaper holdings, and the Daily News was one of them.
By 1995, the newspaper had begun to change its stance on political issues in order to appeal to a broader audience, and by the beginning of the 21st century, the paper had become known for its “flexibly centrist” stance. In addition to its local New York coverage, the Daily News also covers national and international news and focuses on politics and sports.
In 2018, the Daily News was owned by Tronc, which also owns several other major newspapers in the United States, including The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. The newspaper is headquartered in Manhattan, with its large Daily News building on West 33rd Street that straddles the tracks leading to Pennsylvania Station.
Each Daily News article contains comprehension and critical thinking questions that help students to examine the story from different perspectives and learn more about it. The questions are based on the articles in each edition and are included at the bottom of each article along with “Background” and “Resources” to support teachers in the classroom.
Each edition of the Daily News includes an article with an overall sentiment score, which reflects how positive or negative an average reader feels about the content. The score is calculated by SSW’s news sentiment model and is published weekly. This score is used as a proxy for overall reader satisfaction and may be useful to gauge how satisfied users are with the content on our site. To view the latest news sentiment score for a specific article, please click on the link to the right.