Founded in 1919, the Daily News is America’s first successful tabloid newspaper. Originally known as the Illustrated Daily News, it soon attracted readers with its sensational coverage of crime, scandal, and violence, lurid photographs, reader contests, cartoons, and entertainment features. By the mid-twentieth century, its circulation had grown to more than a million.
The paper also gained fame during the Second World War for its photojournalism and obituaries of servicemen and women killed in the line of duty. After the war, the Daily News continued to flourish and reached its peak of circulation in 1947. At that time, it was the largest newspaper in the United States. In the early 1950s, Patterson commissioned the architect Raymond Hood to design a new building for the Daily News. The result was a 36-story freestanding Art Deco structure, which has since been the inspiration for the Daily Planet in the Superman franchise.
In the 1970s, the Daily News lost its place as the city’s leading newspaper and began a long decline in readership. The decline was accelerated by the emergence of television, and the newspaper saw its readership decrease to under half a million in 2016. In an attempt to reclaim its audience, the Daily News returned to its roots in 2016 with a style and tone that was both more provocative and less factual. This included, among other things, rehashing its famous headline in which the Statue of Liberty gave a middle finger to Ted Cruz and reprinting an editorial that gave the thumbs down to President Trump.
Today, the Daily News continues to publish large and prominent photographs, for news, entertainment, and sports, as well as intense city news coverage, celebrity gossip, classified ads, comics, a comprehensive and frequently updated website, and a wide range of opinion sections. The paper’s editorial page has long been considered a major voice in the city, and its cartoons are some of the most influential in the nation.
In addition to its news and opinion sections, the Daily News has a strong focus on entertainment, including music, dance, theatre, film, and carving. It is a great source of information on what is happening in the arts and who is involved. It is also a major resource for information on current events, especially politics.
The Yale Daily News Historical Archive provides access to digitized copies of the Daily News, the oldest college newspaper in the United States. This collection contains more than 140 years of YDN reporting and is available to the general public. The archive is maintained by the Yale University Library and is freely accessible online. The Yale Daily News Historical Archive is made possible by a generous gift from an anonymous Yale alumnus. To request permission to use YDN content, please visit our Rights and Permissions site.