Daily news is news about current events and affairs that affect people, companies or governments. This can include news about politics, crime or the economy. In the past, newspapers were one of the main sources of daily news. However, since the mid-2000s, there has been a decline in the number of people reading daily newspapers and a rise in the number of people getting their news digitally. This has had a significant impact on the financial fortunes of daily newspapers, and also on the number of people visiting their websites.

Newspapers are still a vital part of the American news landscape, but their readership is declining and their websites receive less traffic than in the past. This fact sheet provides information on trends in print and digital circulation of daily U.S. newspapers, as well as other data about the state of journalism in the United States.

The New York Daily News is a morning daily tabloid newspaper founded in 1919. Originally called the Illustrated Daily News, it was one of the first successful tabloids in America and attracted readers with sensational coverage of crime and scandal, lurid photographs, and other entertainment features. The paper’s name was changed to the Daily News in 1922. The News once had the largest daily circulation in the country.

In 2022, the top 50 daily newspapers in the United States reported an average of 8.8 million monthly unique visitors to their websites. This is down 20% from the previous year and represents a fraction of their peak in 2021. It is difficult to gauge the digital audience for most daily newspapers because many do not report their numbers to Comscore and some do not have enough traffic to be measured.

This fact sheet was compiled by research assistants Sarah Naseer and Christopher St. Aubin. It is the latest in an ongoing series of reports on the state of news, information and journalism in the digital age, produced by Pew Research Center. The project is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

The Yale Daily News Historical Archive contains digitized versions of the Yale Daily News from its founding in 1878 through 2022. The Archive is open to the public and can be searched through a web interface. This project was made possible by a generous gift from an anonymous Yale alumnus.