The New York Daily Mirror was an American morning tabloid newspaper first published on June 24, 1924, in New York City by the William Randolph Hearst organization as a contrast to their mainstream broadsheets, the Evening Journal and New York American, later consolidated into the New York Journal American. It was created to compete with the New York Daily News which was then a sensationalist tabloid and the most widely circulated newspaper in the United States. Hearst preferred the broadsheet format and sold the Mirror in 1928, only to buy it back in 1932.
Early on, several bright young writers and photographic journalists joined the Daily Mirror, such as Ring Lardner, Jr., Hy Peskin and the political commentator Drew Pearson. The poet-songwriter Nick Kenny was the paper's radio editor, and Edward Zeltner contributed a column. The gossip columnist Walter Winchell was hired away from the New York Evening Graphic, given his own radio show and syndicated, in his prime — the 1940s and early 50s — in more than 2000 daily papers. In 1927, the paper devoted substantial resources to the exploitation of scandal with repeated stories on such events as the divorce trial of real estate tycoon Edward West "Daddy" Browning who at age 51 had married 15-year-old Frances Belle "Peaches" Heenan. Management of the Mirror estimated that its content was 10% news and 90% entertainment.
By the 1930s, the Daily Mirror was one of the Hearst Corporation's largest papers in terms of circulation. However, the paper never became a significantly profitable property and in its later years it declined substantially despite numerous efforts to turn things around.
Despite having the second highest daily circulation of an American newspaper, The Daily Mirror closed on October 16, 1963, after the 114-day 1962–63 New York City newspaper strike. The Daily Mirror name rights were at that point acquired by its rival the Daily News.
On January 4, 1971, publisher Robert W. Farrell revived the New York Daily Mirror in name only, as a tabloid, published in Long Island City, Queens. Operating on a shoestring budget, the paper faced obstruction from the Daily News (from whom it had acquired the Daily Mirror name rights after the Daily News let them lapse). This new iteration of the Daily Mirror ceased publication on February 28, 1972.
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