A daily newspaper that publishes news and information of interest to its readers. It also contains classified ads, comics, and sports. A daily newspaper is usually a morning tabloid and focuses on local news and entertainment events. It is often a competitor of the New York Times.
Founded in 1919 as the Illustrated Daily News by Joseph Medill Patterson and owned by the Tribune Company of Chicago, the first successful tabloid newspaper in the United States, the Daily News attracted readers with sensational stories of crime and scandal, lurid photographs, and celebrity gossip. The paper reached its peak circulation in 1947 at 2.4 million daily and 4.7 million on Sunday and was one of the largest newspapers in the world at that time. Its offices were located in the historic art deco Daily News Building in Manhattan. The News was the originator of television station WPIX and its radio sibling, WFAN-FM, which continue to operate out of the former building.
In the 1980s the Daily News was losing money and its parent company put it up for sale. British media mogul Robert Maxwell purchased the newspaper in March 1991, and ended the five-month union strike that had crippled it. He negotiated agreements with nine of the ten unions, who were negotiating through the umbrella organization Allied Printing Trades Council. He did not agree to changes in work rules that he deemed inefficient. Maxwell later drowned and the newspaper filed for bankruptcy in December.