Less than six months after Harry F. Guggenheim purchased a makeshift newspaper plant that had once belonged to S.I. Newhouse’s failed Nassau Daily Journal , the inaugural, typo-ridden issue of Newsday rolled off the presses on September 3, 1940. It was headquartered on Long Island and, though its readership was centered there, the paper hoped to compete with the best of the Manhattan dailies. Though the paper was widely seen as a ploy to keep Guggenheim’s wife, Alicia Patterson, occupied and out of trouble, Patterson had journalism in her veins—her father founded the New York Daily News , her aunt helmed the Washington Times , and her cousin ran the Chicago Tribune —and her journalistic ambitions found a perfect outlet on Long Island, whose population boomed in the post-World War II years. Soon, Newsday had become the dominant voice of the community. [1]

After Patterson’s sudden death in 1963, the conservative Guggenheim hired a young Bill Moyers as its publisher, but Moyers’ left-leaning politics and his stance on the Vietnam War proved problematic. Moyers left the paper in 1970. In 1971, Guggenheim sold Newsday to the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Company. Editor and publisher David Laventhol ran the newspaper for the next 16 years, greatly widening Newsday ’s range. He added a Sunday section, expanded the staff and set up bureaus in Washington and abroad. By the mid-1980s, Newsday was so profitable that its 265 pages did not have enough room to meet advertisers’ demand. [2]

This streak did not last, however. Despite its storied record, 19 Pulitzer Prizes and its reputation as an incubator for talents such as Gail Collins and nationally-syndicated cartoonist Walt Handelsman, Newsday ’s fortunes waned significantly after circulation began to decline in 1993. [3] In 2000, Newsday was bought by the Tribune Company and, like so many regional newspapers, it struggled to stay relevant in a rapidly changing media market. Its efforts, however, ran up against the Tribune Company’s need to cut costs.The international bureaus were shuttered, and the staff shrank from 500 to less than 300.Efforts to expand into the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, though technically part of Long Island, did not bear much fruit. [4]

Despite its troubles, however, Newsday remained the country’s 10th largest daily by circulation. It was first among suburban newspapers. [5] After the 1996 launch of its website, Newsday.com, the paper also maintained a robust presence on the Web.