BY SHAVANA ABRUZZO | There’s still some bang left in the old buck!
Though the dollar doesn’t stretch very far these days, it can still get you a slice of pizza, a song on iTunes (sometimes), and now, a copy of the Daily News. Our pals in publishing — all NYC Community Media and Community News Group publications are printed at the News’ printing press, and Manhattan Express is delivered in Sunday editions of the daily — have slashed its newsstand price by a quarter in all five boroughs as of January11.
The media grapevine buzzed over the cut, which comes just seven months after the News hiked its price to $1.25. Some print pundits speculated that the News drove up sales with its strong gun control advocacy after the San Bernardino shootings, while others credited its willingness to swallow a decline in newsstand revenues to a fresh round of layoffs.
News honchos said only that readers shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
“As New York’s Hometown Paper, we look for every opportunity to bring our loyal readers the news they need at a lower price point,” Bill Holiber, president and CEO of the Daily News, said in the press release.
Consider the quarter savings no chump change, either, officials urged.
“Life in New York City is hard enough and we figured we’d put 25 cents back in the pockets of our faithful readers,” said Ricardo Flattes, circulation sales and consumer marketing director. “It all adds up.”
The New York Daily News, founded in 1919 as the Illustrated Daily News by Joseph Medill Patterson, was the first successful tabloid newspaper in America, with the largest circulation in the nation. It later changed its name to the Daily News, attracting readers with its sensational coverage of crime, scandal, and violence, and lurid photographs, cartoons, and other entertainment features. By 1930, its circulation had leapt to more than 1.5 million and in the next decade increased to two million, as it delivered the lowdown on political wrongdoings behind President Warren G. Harding’s Teapot Dome Scandal and, later, the intriguing romance between Wallis Simpson and Britain’s King Edward VIII that led to his abdication.
On October 30, 1975 the Daily News brought the nation to a hush with its gut-punching screamer, “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”
Now, trusty readers are applauding the cheaper price.
“It means that the New York’s hometown paper is still in business,” said Flatbush, Brooklyn, resident Tom Harris, 54. “And I won’t have to rummage about looking for that extra quarter.”
