The Yale Daily News
Daily News provides a comprehensive collection of the latest news from around the world. It features local, national and international news as well as business stories. The site also offers a wide range of other resources such as videos, audio clips, news blogs and forums and a full archive of past issues.
The site is also an excellent resource for students and teachers. Each article contains comprehension and critical thinking questions for students to engage with the news story. Additionally, “Background” and “Resources” are provided below the questions to help students understand the context of the news story.
Founded in 1878, the Yale Daily News is the nation’s oldest college newspaper. The paper is financially and editorially independent, and publishes Monday through Friday during the academic year. The News’s main focus is on serving the Yale and New Haven communities. The News has a strong tradition of covering campus and community affairs, including the arts, culture and higher education. The Yale Daily News also publishes special editions each year, including the Commencement Issue, the Game Day Issue and the First Year Issue.
In addition to its traditional print publication, the News has several broadcast properties, including WPIX-TV (Channel 11 in New York City), whose call letters are derived from the original nickname of the newspaper; and WFAN-AM radio, which is based in the old Daily News building. The News at one time maintained local offices in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens.
By the end of the 1920s, the Daily News had a circulation that exceeded that of any other daily newspaper in the country. The newspaper’s success was attributed to its sensational pictorial coverage and willingness to go one step further than its competitors in the pursuit of an attention-grabbing front page. This was perhaps best illustrated when the News used a photo taken by Chicago Tribune reporter Tom Howard of Ruth Snyder mid-electrocution, which ran under the headline “DEAD!”
In an effort to rediscover its earning potential, the Daily News made a number of changes under new editor in chief Mort Zuckerman. One of the most significant was to move the newspaper to a more serious tabloid format. He also invested $60 million towards color presses, allowing the News to compete with USA Today in terms of visual appeal. The change was successful and the paper began to see a profit by the fall of 1993. Despite this, the Daily News was never able to recover its position as the country’s biggest daily newspaper, falling behind USA Today in both sales and circulation. In the late 1990s, the paper gained a reputation for protecting the First Amendment and for covering social and civic issues in New York City, winning Pulitzer Prizes in 1996 for E.R. Shipp’s pieces on race and welfare and again in 1998 for Mike McAlary’s coverage of police brutality against Haitian immigrant Abner Louima. By the early 21st century, the paper struggled to survive as online media and a proliferation of competing local news outlets eroded its readership.