UPDATE NY Daily News Closing Newsroom But NOT Closing Paper, Says They Will Continue to Publish, “No Layoffs”

Showbiz411.com ^ | 8/12/2020 | Roger Friedman -

[Beave Meister]

UPDATE: Sources say the paper is not closing. But they are getting out of their lease as only a half dozen people have been coming into work, the rest of the skeletal staff if working from home. “They want to find a new smaller space by November 1st,” I am told. But for New York’s hometown paper not to have a home is very distressing. My source stressed: No layoffs. (There aren’t many left to lay off.)

EARLIER REPORT: The New York Times reports that the Daily News is basically dead, even if it will continue on like the Walking Dead.

Today the News will close its newsroom downtown and employees will have til the fall to come and get their things.

Will the paper continue a print edition? No one knows yet. Online edition? Why not?

The paper was sold to Tribune Publishing– then known as Tronc– in 2017 by Mort Zuckerman, who bought the paper out of bankruptcy in 2003. The previous owner was Robert Maxwell, who died mysteriously on his yacht. Maxwell was the father of Ghislaine Maxwell, now in prison and awaiting trial in the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandals.

Tribune, dedicated to killing newspapers, is also closing the newsroom of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland. Two years ago a gunman killed five of the reporters there. This is Tribune’s tribute to those brave heroes.

Zuckerman will have no comment on the end of the Daily News, which he legitimately loved. A few years before he sold the paper, he exited the public stage as a form of dementia, and perhaps Alzheimer’s, began to take over. His nephews assumed control of his companies, and got rid of the News as soon as possible. They basically gave it to Tribune and walked away.

[Oatka]

Used to be a decent newspaper. They were always liberal, but they represented the working and lower-class.

I remember them from the '50s when I lived in NYC. Clever writers - one headline illustrated that when they reported that Gloria Vanderbilt was coming to NYC to get some ailment treated. The headline read "Sick Gloria in Transit".

They always posted their circulation numbers in the upper right of the first page. If you played the numbers, all you had to do was check the last three figures.