During their heyday in the mid-twentieth century, the New York Daily News and its rival tabloid, the New York Post, were two of the largest-circulation newspapers in America. They competed fiercely for readership and ran a wide range of stories, from sensational headlines to hard-hitting editorials. The News, founded in 1919 as the Illustrated Daily News and later the New York Daily News, was one of the first daily papers printed in tabloid format. Today the News is owned by tronc, and its headquarters are in Manhattan’s Daily News Building at 4 New York Plaza.
While it is easy to identify the journal National Review as the journalistic parent of modern American conservatism, a parallel lineage of reactionary populism exists with wider reach, binding its readers into a community based on anti-elitism and white working-class identity. This lineage was led by the New York Daily News, which from the 1940s through the 1960s espoused a conservatism far further right than National Review and bound its readers into a worldview of reactionary nationalism.
The Daily News emphasized the needs of “the common man.” Its editorial page defended nationalistic policies such as a national lottery and legalized gambling, which it saw as economic alternatives to high taxes. The paper also favored traditionalist social attitudes, including traditional marriage and an exclusive use of the English language. These policies aimed to preserve the “traditional” way of life that many of its readers valued and rejected the influence of liberal, metropolitan elites.
In contrast to National Review, which attacked bureaucrats, diplomats, taxation, regulation, and communists, the Daily News focused on domestic issues and the needs of a certain type of average citizen. It argued that government was too big and too corrupt and favored smaller, decentralized institutions. It promoted the belief that ordinary citizens were more competent than bureaucrats and that the press could be trusted to defend them from corruption and foreign influences.
In addition to nationalistic populism, the News embraced reactionary anti-immigration and anti-black sentiments. The paper supported segregation and railed against urban integration, particularly in the Stuyvesant Heights section of Brooklyn. Its readers were largely white ethnics who felt that they were the victims of corrupt and incompetent city hall officials, the police force, and the city’s long-standing establishment. The newspaper appealed to the “common man,” whom it depicted as god-fearing and patriotic. Its politics were a way for these readers to demonstrate their virtue in a society they considered to be hostile to them.
