Founded in 1919 as the Illustrated Daily News by Joseph Medill Patterson and initially owned by the Chicago Tribune Company, the Daily News was the first tabloid newspaper to achieve success in the United States. It attracted readers with sensational stories of crime and scandal, lurid photographs, and celebrity gossip. During the 1920s and 1930s, the News also emphasized political wrongdoing, including the Teapot Dome Scandal and the romance between Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII that led to his abdication. The paper was one of the early users of AP wirephotos in the 1930s and employed a large staff of photographers.
Despite constant circulation battles with its more sensational rival, the New York Post, the Daily News remained one of the country’s best-selling newspapers in the 21st century. In 2017, however, the newspaper suffered from declining readership and financial difficulties, and publisher Mortimer Zuckerman sold it for $1 to Tronc, a Chicago-based media company.
The News’s original headquarters at 220 East 42nd Street (later 450 West 33rd Street and then Manhattan West) was an official city and national landmark designed by architects John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood. It was the model for the Daily Planet building in the Superman films. The News later moved to its current headquarters at 501 West 33rd Street, and the former News subsidiary WPIX-TV remains in that building today.
Throughout its history, the Daily News has been a major influence on politics in the United States and has had significant impact worldwide. Ad Fontes Media rates the newspaper as Skewed Left in bias and Reliable in analysis/fact reporting.