The Daily News is Yale’s independent college newspaper, publishing Monday through Friday during the academic year. It covers campus, community and international news, as well as sports, arts, culture and opinion. Its staff includes more than 200 full- and part-time students. The Daily News also publishes a weekly supplement called WEEKEND, the Yale Daily News Magazine and several special issues each year in collaboration with Yale’s cultural centers and affiliated student groups. The Daily News is the nation’s oldest college daily newspaper and is financially and editorially independent.
The News has a long tradition of investigative journalism, breaking many high-profile cases including the rape of Rachel Dolezal in 2012, and its investigative coverage has led to federal prosecutions. It has also been a leader in the reporting of sexual assault on campus and in the city, focusing on the systemic nature of the problem. The News is known for its fearless, bold style and the ability to engage and entertain its readers while delivering a robust news experience.
Daily newspapers, which were the primary form of information before the advent of the Internet, have always played a key role in shaping public discourse and influencing elections and policy. They were the first medium to provide a regular flow of current events in a structured, convenient format. Moreover, these publications were not only informative and authoritative but also emotionally and politically charged, often fostering the development of new social groups.
In mid-twentieth century New York, for example, the News positioned itself as an advocate for common people and their interests. Its commitment to fighting for the city’s poor shaped the paper’s editorial views and coverage choices: residents wanted affordable housing, a stable subway, and clean, safe streets. The News promoted those goals but with a conservative twist: ease city development restrictions, allow police to be more aggressive, and use private enterprise to provide some city services, rather than taxing citizens.
The News also tapped into deep veins of populism and ethnonationalism, which are long-term features of American politics. In the early postwar years, for instance, the News promoted a strict definition of marriage and a sense of loyalty to the white working-class family. Its stance was further right than the National Review, binding its readership into a community based on anti-elitism and white working-class identity.
It is difficult to know whether Daily News readers bought the newspaper in spite of or because of its partisanship, and many critics assumed that its political positions were buried under seemingly apolitical crime stories and human-interest articles. But the News had a larger audience than any other print media outlet at the time, and its partisan messages tended to resonate with its target audience. As a result, the Daily News played an important role in shaping post-World War II American conservatism, even though the lineage of that movement runs from Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to Donald Trump.