In the wake of a recession that has shaved profits from many traditional news outlets, and as once-explosive growth in online advertising has leveled off, there is renewed debate about whether newspapers are entering a permanent trough or simply suffering the effects of changing times. Many readers are also rethinking their consumption of news, choosing to opt for digital and mobile offerings rather than traditional newspaper reading. Despite these trends, there are still plenty of people who insist on making their way through the daily news in print form.
One of the most influential publications in modern US history is the New York Daily News, a tabloid founded in 1919 as the Illustrated Daily News and later named the Daily News. It became the first successful tabloid in the United States, attracting readers with sensational coverage of crime and scandal, lurid photographs, and cartoons. Its circulation peaked at 2.4 million daily in 1947.
The Daily News was a founding member of the United Press Association in 1924, and was among the first to adopt the use of color in printing. From 1929 to 1995 the Daily News was based in 220 East 42nd Street, an art deco building that is an official city and national landmark designed by architects John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood. The building is now known as 5 Manhattan West and houses the cable news channel WPIX.
Like all tabloids, the Daily News was a notoriously controversial publication. It gained a reputation as a staunchly conservative publication during the 1970s, but in an attempt to boost earnings, the paper began to play to its more flamboyant strengths. This led to one of the most famous headlines in its history, in 1975, when it proclaimed “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD” in response to President Gerald Ford’s veto of a bankruptcy bailout for New York City.
By the 1980s, the Daily News was losing more than $1 million a month due to its high labor costs. Eventually, the newspaper’s parent company offered it for sale; it was ultimately purchased by media mogul Robert Maxwell, who renamed the Daily News the New York Daily News and began to focus on boosting profitability through cost cuts and renegotiating union contracts.
At the same time, the internet was exploding into use, and new apps were providing more personalized and convenient ways to consume news. For example, Pulse, an app for smartphones that was acquired by LinkedIn in 2015, delivers a customized news feed to users based on their professional interests and connections; it can even recommend articles that are not yet in their feed.
The app has been praised for its user-friendly design and ease of use, as well as its ability to provide more in-depth coverage of the stories that matter most to its users. Similarly, the weekday e-newsletter theSkimm offers concise, double-checked news summaries that make sense of a day’s worth of news in just a few paragraphs. It even spins of-the-moment information into entertaining new narratives (“What to say when you feel the need for WebMD”).