The Yale Daily News is the nation’s oldest college newspaper, founded on January 28, 1878. Published Monday through Friday during the academic year, the paper serves the campus community of Yale and New Haven, Connecticut. The News is financially and editorially independent of the university. The News is also home to the Yale Daily News Historical Archive, a collection of digital versions of print issues from the past 140 years.
In the 1920s, like other popular dailies, the Daily News found abundant subject matter—political wrongdoing (such as the Teapot Dome scandal) and social intrigue (such as the romance between Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII that ultimately led to the latter’s abdication). The paper was an early user of Associated Press wirephoto services and developed a large staff of photographers. Its style was often brassy and pictorial, earning the newspaper the nickname “The Brassy Daily.”
By 1975, the newspaper’s circulation had reached a peak of nearly two million daily copies. Even though it was locked in a circulation battle with the New York Post and the more sensational rival tabloid, the Daily News remained one of the nation’s top-selling newspapers. By the 21st century, however, the News had begun to lose ground to its juggernaut competitors. In particular, the advent of the Internet and online news outlets proved a major blow to traditional newspapers, with the Daily News experiencing its first substantial drops in readership.
Nonetheless, the paper continued to publish a robust mix of local and national news. It was credited with helping to spark the civil rights movement and was among the first publications to call for President Nixon’s resignation. Throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s, the paper strove to remain on the cutting edge of journalism. In addition to its investigative reporting, the Daily News produced several well-regarded TV shows (such as The Ed Sullivan Show) and launched an influential magazine, The New Yorker.
In 1991, Maxwell died aboard his yacht in the Atlantic Ocean. His vast media empire had racked up hundreds of millions in debt and he was suspected of embezzling pension funds to buy stocks. As a result, the newspaper was in dire financial straits. In September, the newspaper’s former owners—Tribune Publishing Company, which had purchased the Daily News from Maxwell in 1988—repurchased the newspaper for a mere one dollar. The following year, Tronc went on a firing spree and cut half of the editorial staff, leaving only 45 employees plying their trade in the News Building. This was a far cry from the 400 or so people that worked for the newspaper at its peak in the late 1980s.