In 1940, as World War II ensnared the globe, New Yorkers had 10 major daily newspapers to get their news. The papers pictured didn’t survive.You’re probably more likely to have read about it online than in print, but this is National Newspaper Week. And if you can’t take a reporter to lunch, at least pause and reflect on the fact that while New York remains that rare, robust daily newspaper town, that’s nothing compared to the choices available in the city a century ago.
Chicago was the setting for Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s rollicking 1928 melodrama, “The Front Page,†but New York had many more front pages.
In 1900, at least 15 daily general circulation English-language newspapers were being published in New York, before they were gobbled up by mergers and acquisitions or died untimely deaths.
Their names and logos are largely the stuff of nostalgia.
In addition to two survivors â€" The New York Times and The New York Post â€" New Yorkers could regularly read The Press, The Herald, The Tribune, The Telegram, The Mail and Express, The Evening News, The Commercial Advertiser, and the morning and evening editions of The World, The Sun and The Journal.
They would be followed in subsequent decades by The Daily News, The Daily Mirror, The Graphic, P.M. and The Compass. More localized dailies included The Brooklyn Eagle, The Bronx Home News, The Long Island Press, The Long Island Star-Journal and The Staten Island Advance.
The Mirror folded in 1963 with a million readers. Dwindling advertising doomed the ultimate conglomerate, the hybrid World Journal Tribune - known as the Widget â€" in 1967 (its offspring, New York Magazine, survived). New York Newsday closed in 1995.
Still, no other city still has as many newspapers in the top 25 by paid circulation today. New York has four: The Times, The Daily News, The Post and The Wall Street Journal, although print readership has declined precipitously since the days when The News could regularly boast two million daily and three million on Sundays.
Combined print and online circulation for The Times and some other publications are higher than ever, though. AMNew York and New York Metro are distributed free.
