New York Daily NewsArticle Free Pass The New York Daily News was
the first successful tabloid newspaper in the United States. It
was founded in 1919 as the Illustrated Daily News by Joseph
Medill Patterson and was a subsidiary of the Tribune Company of
Chicago. After a few months the paper changed its name to the
Daily News. It attracted readers with sensational coverage of
crime, scandal, and violence, lurid photographs, and cartoons
and other entertainment features. By 1930 its circulation had
risen to 1,520,000, reaching 2,000,000 in the next decade. The
New York Daily News found abundant subject matter in the United
States of the 1920s. Like other popular dailies, it emphasized
political wrongdoing such as the Teapot Dome Scandal and social
intrigue such as the romance between Wallis Simpson and King
Edward VIII that led to his abdication. The paper devoted much
attention to photography; it was an early user of the Associated
Press wirephoto service in the 1930s and developed a large staff
of photographer