A newspaper is a regularly published collection of fairly brief articles that provide updates on current events and interests. It may include news, crime, business, culture, sports, and editorial opinions (either opinion columns or political cartoons). Many newspapers also carry weather news and forecasts, advice columnists, critic reviews of movies, plays, and restaurants, a crossword and sudoku puzzles, humor pieces, comic strips, horoscopes, and other entertainment features. In addition, many newspapers publish significant amounts of commercial and classified advertising.
The oldest direct ancestor of the modern newspaper was a handwritten daily news posting known as Acta Diurna, recorded in Rome in 59 B.C.E. Throughout history, the newspaper format has evolved, including a number of international and regional variations. Today, many newspapers are available online and through mobile devices, with some having a specific focus on local news and issues.
Traditionally, a newspaper has been the primary source of information for people living in a given area, but over time the internet and social media have gained increasing popularity as sources of news. This has led to a decrease in newspaper sales and a rise in the number of free daily online news publications.
In the United States, there are currently six major daily papers, all owned by media corporations: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Each of these newspapers has different editorial positions on politics, the economy, and other social issues. They are also all competing against each other in terms of readership and revenue.
A major concern for some critics is the growing number of large media corporations that own newspapers. They fear that the need to increase profits, a natural impulse for these corporations, will have a negative impact on the quality of journalism and the ability to keep a newspaper in print.
The Daily News was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson, a publisher of the Chicago Tribune. The newspaper was the first to be printed in tabloid format, and at its peak circulation in 1947 it topped 2.4 million copies a day. The paper is sometimes referred to as “the brassy, pictorial New York Daily News” and as “the most New York of the New York papers”.
In 1975 the Daily News rolled out what became its most famous headline—”FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.” After President Gerald Ford delivered a speech the previous day in which he vetoed a bankruptcy bail-out for New York City, the front page screamed that he was telling the city to drop dead.
After several years of financial struggles, the Daily News turned around under its new owner, Mortimer Zuckerman. In 1993 he invested $60 million to put the newspaper on color presses, matching the visual quality of USA Today and other national papers. He also moved the paper away from a hard-line Republican position to a more flexible centrist position, and adopted the slogans “The eyes, the ears, the honest voice of New York” and “The most New York you can get.” In 1978, the Daily News was forced to shut down for three months during a multi-union strike. Its circulation was down 145,000 by the time it resumed.