A moment of appreciation for our esteemed colleagues at the New York Daily News, both past and present. Its front pages are part of the city’s iconography – and maybe none more so than 1975’s “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s gambit of flattering President Donald Trump with a mocked up front page of the future – “Trump to City: Let’s Build” – only worked so well because of the blood, sweat and tears that Daily Newsers since 1919 have put into making the paper a respected brand.
And it’s not just Trump flashing a thousand-watt smile over the Daily News as Mamdani asked for $21 billion in federal grants to build 12,000 new homes over Sunnyside Yard in Queens. Countless other New Yorkers chortled over their coffee the very same day, as The New York Times dissected the tabloidese of the Mamdani era. The New York Post is partial to “Zo.” The Daily News is going with “Zoh.”
This all comes as the Daily News goes through a rough patch, laying off journalists and seeing other top reporters leave jobs that they loved amid the turmoil.
Let those events be a reminder of the importance of local journalism, and that doing it right takes a lot of hard work by reporters. City & State New York proves that every week, but this week’s cover story is a prime example: Reporter Mark Chiusano dug into the detainment of Rafael Rubio by contacting his family, roommates and co-workers, and reviewing paper documents in court to get the full story of a New York City Council employee caught up in the deportation regime of a president who loves his local news.
