The New York Daily News began its saga in 1919 as America’s first tabloid, a compact, photo-rich newspaper aimed at commuters. By 1947 the paper had become a cultural juggernaut, moving roughly 2.4 million copies on weekdays and 4.8 million on Sundays—unmatched circulation for any U.S. daily up to that point.
During the 1960s the paper’s readership eroded as industrial workers left Manhattan and television stole the evening audience. By the late 1970s the Daily News faced a new adversary: Rupert Murdoch who had acquired the New York Post and turned it into a sensationalist tabloid that combined scandal, sex, and bold headlines. Rather than fight Murdoch on his own terms, the Daily News leadership decided to chase a completely different market.
The Upscale Turn: Daily News Tonight
At the helm of the transformation was Mike O’Neill managing editor since 1968. O’Neill sought to purge the paper of its “crime-and-scandal” reputation, bringing in columnists like Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill and modernizing the news layout. Yet corporate consultants—hired by the Chicago Tribune Company, the Daily News’s owner—repeated a single mantra: “Only newspapers with upscale appeal can survive.”
Embracing that advice, O’Neill announced in June 1980 a $20 million investment to launch Daily News Tonight an afternoon edition aimed at Manhattan’s affluent commuters and homebound residents. The plan called for hiring up to 400 staff members and delivering a 24-page “Manhattan” section filled with arts coverage, fashionable profiles, and a gossip column titled “I, Claudia,” penned by former Page Six writer Claudia Cohen.
To steer the endeavor, O’Neill recruited Clay Felker the magazine editor credited with inventing modern magazine storytelling and the New Journalism style. Felker, who had been forced out of New York magazine after Murdoch’s 1977 purchase, saw Daily News Tonight as a chance to strike back at his former employer. He assembled a newsroom of glossy-magazine veterans, paid them premium salaries, and instituted a leisurely pace that clashed with the Daily News’s hard-nosed cityroom culture.
Murdoch’s Counterattack and the Collapse
From the start, the new edition tried to position itself against the readership of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal not directly against the Post. An early advertisement showed commuters swapping a morning Times for an evening Daily News Tonight. Yet internal chatter—Felker’s own admission that the target was “more affluent, upscale people, not the Queens housewife”—undermined the paper’s brand and alienated veteran staff who felt the move was elitist.
While the editorial team produced high-quality pieces—ranging from arts profiles to trend stories—the circulation numbers never matched the lofty projections. The consultants’ premise proved false: “people wanted a fast read in the afternoon and then to throw it away,” a sentiment echoed by staff who preferred the quick, sensational bite of the Post. Sensing an opportunity, Murdoch shifted the Post from a pure afternoon tabloid to an all-day operation, matching the Daily News’s price and adding a late-afternoon edition that featured stock market data—precisely the feature Daily News Tonight hoped would attract business readers.
By June 1981 Felker was removed as editor, and two months later the ambitious edition was shuttered. The failure was summed up by the publisher as “a bad marketing plan,” acknowledging that the $20 million outlay and the hiring of up to 400 staff did not translate into sustainable readership.
Legacy of a Misguided Experiment
The Daily News Tonight episode illustrated how a newspaper rooted in working-class identity could falter when attempting to rebrand for a high-end audience. The experiment’s fallout cleared a competitive space that Murdoch readily filled, cementing his dominance in the New York tabloid market for decades to come.
Today, the story serves as a cautionary tale for media executives: chasing a perceived upscale niche without solid audience data can jeopardize even a storied institution. As one observer quipped, the Daily News’s elite ambition proved “a Cadillac and a Chevy” that could not coexist on the same newsroom floor.
