The New York Daily News laid off almost half of its newsroom staff last week, prompting hand-wringing about the dire state of journalism, especially local newsrooms. But laments about the death of the news business are often oversimplified. Newsgathering isn’t dying; instead, it’s becoming stratified, with real implications for our knowledge of the world.
The New York Daily News was founded nearly a century ago by Joseph Medill Patterson, a member of the McCormick family, which parlayed a manufacturing fortune into a second fortune manufacturing public opinion in the heartland. Patterson pioneered in bringing the tabloid format to New York, and he plunged the paper into the high-tech new medium of the day: high-speed photography.
The Daily News even made a bit of photojournalism history early on when photographer Tom Howard smuggled a hidden camera into Sing Sing prison. In defiance of prison rules, he snapped a photo of Ruth Snyder as she was executed in the electric chair for killing her husband. The photo ran the next day on page one under the stark headline “DEAD!”
After a slow start, the Daily News caught on among New Yorkers. The paper took advantage of a flourishing newspaper business — in the early 1920s, New York City alone had a whopping 17 daily newspapers in English. There were many more publications in other languages or aimed at particular audiences, such as union members, African Americans, horse fanciers and more.
Although the Daily News was hardly read outside the New York City area, it was immensely popular with the city’s working and middle class. By 1925, the paper was selling more than 1 million copies a day. Circulation peaked in 1947 at 2.4 million a day and close to 5 million on Sunday.
The Daily News was beloved for not pulling punches. In true tabloid style, it was often brimming with stories about crime (especially if they involved some famous person or some novel technique) and corruption in state or city affairs.
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