The Daily News is a tabloid newspaper founded in 1919 and based in New York City. It calls itself “New York’s Hometown Paper.” The newspaper is known for its zesty headlines, celebrity gossip and intense city news coverage. It has won eleven Pulitzer Prizes. Its editorial writers have included Jimmy Breslin, Liz Smith and Pete Hamill. In addition to news and entertainment coverage, the paper also offers sports, classified ads and comics.
The Yale Daily News Historical Archive contains digitized copies of printed issues of the newspaper, dating back to its founding in 1878. The archive is accessible worldwide and free of charge. Several of the newspaper’s editors, contributors and staff members have gone on to prominent careers in journalism and public life including William F. Buckley, Lan Samantha Chang, John Hersey, Joseph Lieberman, Sargent Shriver, Paul Steiger, Calvin Trillin and Garry Trudeau.
In its early years, the newspaper emphasized political wrongdoing and social intrigue such as the Teapot Dome Scandal and the romance between Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII that led to her abdication. The newspaper was an early user of Associated Press wirephotos in the 1930s and developed a large staff of photographers. The newspaper once maintained bureaus in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens and its main headquarters was a landmark building on 42nd Street at Second Avenue designed by John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood that featured a giant globe in its lobby. The newspaper later moved to 450 West 33rd Street (also known as 5 Manhattan West), which houses the world headquarters of the AP.
The newspaper has adapted to the digital age, but it has faced challenges as circulation continues to decline. In 2017, it was reported that the publisher, Mort Zuckerman, was selling the newspaper to Tronc, a Chicago-based media company. In the deal, Tronc assumed the Daily News’s financial liabilities.
This dataset includes a time series of individual articles from the Daily News from April 6–April 12, 2021. It provides an opportunity to examine the dynamics of news sentiment in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The data are updated weekly. For additional information on this project, please see the FRB San Francisco Economic Letter by Buckman, Shapiro, Sudhof and Wilson (2020). The dataset is available for download in the Data section of this page. For more information about obtaining permission to reproduce content from this site, please visit the YDN Rights and Permissions page.