Philadelphia Daily News
The Philadelphia Daily News is a tabloid newspaper that began publishing on March 31, 1925, under founding editor Lee Ellmaker. In its early years, it was dominated by crime stories, sports and sensationalism. By 1930, daily circulation of the morning paper exceeded 200,000.
Circulation dropped over the years, and by 1954, the money-losing paper was sold to Matthew McCloskey, a contractor and treasurer of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. In December of 1956, the paper's financial condition was so bad that McCloskey got permission from the unions for a 90 percent cut in the workforce.
In 1957, McCloskey sold the paper to Walter Annenberg, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Annenberg killed off the Daily News' Sunday edition and made the tabloid into an afternoon paper.
In 1970, Annenberg sold both papers to Knight Newspapers Inc., which eventually became today's Knight Ridder follwing a merger.
Under the new ownership, the Daily News returned to morning publication and aimed to be taken more seriously. The paper's journalists have won the Pulitzer Prize twice since then. Richard Aregood won in 1985 for editorial writing and Signe Wilkinson won for her editorial cartoons in 1992.
The paper continues to struggle financially (It was surpassed in readership by the free daily Metro) and talk that Knight Ridder will shut the paper down continues, especially with Knight Ridder executives floating the idea of turning the Inquirer into a tabloid.