New York’s ‘hometown newspaper’ sold

Owner of Chicago, Los Angeles papers buys Daily News.

The owner of two of the country’s largest newspapers has purchased the Daily News, a New York tabloid that is famous for generations of hard-punching reporting and irreverent headlines but that has struggled recently to find its place in the digital age.

Chicago-based Tronc Inc., the publisher of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, announced the deal Monday night.

The purchase gives Tronc and its chairman, Michael Ferro, another big brand name in old-school journalism.

The big question will be whether the company can find a way to make the newspaper lucrative again. The Daily News won a Pulitzer Prize this year but has gone through rounds of layoffs and declining circulation.

Tronc CEO Justin Dearborn said acquiring the paper and its website would “provide us with another strategic platform for growing our digital business, expanding our reach and broadening our services for advertisers and marketers,” and both Tronc and Daily News executives said the company would maintain the quality of the paper’s journalism.

“Over the past near-century, the New York Daily News has served New York City and its surrounding areas with its award-winning journalism and helped shape the dynamics of the city,” said outgoing News owner, Mort Zuckerman. A New York real estate magnate, he had owned the paper since 1993.

The deal puts the Daily News under the umbrella of one of the nation’s major newspaper chains, with properties spanning from the Hartford Courant in Connecticut to the Sun-Sentinel in South Florida.

Tronc — which evolved from the Tribune Co. — has said it aims to focus on techdriven initiatives involving artificial intelligence and global expansion in entertainment news and video. With the Daily News, Tronc gets a presence in the New York media market, a news site with about 25 million unique monthly visitors.

Under the terms of the deal, Tronc said it assumed the Daily News’ operational and pension liabilities and got 100 percent ownership of its Jersey City, New Jersey.

Founded in 1919, the Daily News considers itself “New York’s Hometown Newspaper.” It has been known over the years for zesty headlines — perhaps most notably “Ford to City: Drop Dead” during the New York’s financial woes in 1975 — gossip, city coverage and star columnists who included Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill and Liz Smith.