Founded in 1878, the Yale Daily News is the nation’s oldest college newspaper. It publishes Monday through Friday during the academic year and serves Yale and New Haven, CT. The News is financially and editorially independent, and it collaborates with Yale’s cultural centers and student groups on annual special issues celebrating Black, Latinx and Asian American communities.
The Daily News has long been an anchor of the local journalism ecosystem, with a national reputation as a flagship newspaper and a deep history of community engagement. During the 1920s, it found abundant subject matter in everything from political wrongdoing (the Teapot Dome scandal) to social intrigue (the romance between Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII). In 1948, the News launched what became WPIX-TV and continues to house that station in the News Building at 220 East 42nd Street, an official city and national landmark designed by architects John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood.
A harrowing video captures an 87-year-old man’s final moments on a Queens sidewalk as he’s gunned down by a scooter-riding assailant who left three others wounded during a bloody spree in Brooklyn and Queens. The killing was one of the most brutal in recent times in a city with a growing problem of violent street crime. The Daily News was on hand to document the aftermath, and this video is among a number of powerful visuals to emerge.
Hedge fund Alden Global Capital has enacted buyouts and cuts since taking over Tribune Publishing in August, leaving the Daily News and other newspapers in its care struggling to meet deadlines while also balancing costs. Now, some journalists have formed a union to fight back against what they call ruthless cost-cutting and plan to organize protests in several cities.
Shareholders of Tribune Publishing will vote on whether to approve a takeover bid from hedge fund Alden Global Capital next week, and the deal appears likely to go through. But a wave of opposition is bubbling up, including three legal fights, plans for multicity rallies and written pleas from employees to save the newspaper.
In a time when many newspapers have gone under, the southwestern Pennsylvania town of McKeesport is trying to make sense of its own life without a trusted source of news. It is a case study of what happens when local journalism dies, and the people who try to revive it.