Only 25 years ago, The Daily News had more weekday readers than any other newspaper in America, with a daily paid circulation that easily exceeded one million. As of March, that number had dropped to 312,736.
These days, a struggling newspaper hardly qualifies as news; dozens of papers around the country have shut down in recent years. But the fate of The Daily News carries a unique symbolic weight. The News is the model of the big-city, elbows-out tabloid, a local paper with a national profile. Superman worked there, or Clark Kent did, anyway: The lobby of the Daily News Building on 42nd Street, with its massive, rotating globe, was the basis for the headquarters of The Daily Planet in the movie “Superman.” The paper was the inspiration for “The Paper.”
So who wants to buy this journalistic institution? According to the NY Times today, the most likely candidate once appeared to be Mr. Murdoch, the assumption being that he would simply shut it down. But Mr. Murdoch, 84, already loses tens of millions of dollars a year on The Post. And judging from the most recent acquisitions of the Murdoch-controlled media company News Corporation — a real estate listings site and a romance novel publisher — his interest in newspapers is limited.
Last week, Reuters reported that James Dolan, the head of Cablevision and Newsday, had withdrawn his $1 bid for the paper. (A Daily News spokesman said Mr. Dolan never made a formal bid, so there was nothing to withdraw.)
That leaves three likely bidders: John A. Catsimatidis, the supermarket magnate; Jimmy Finkelstein, a New York entrepreneur; and Jon Peters, a hair stylist-turned-Hollywood-mogul. None have ever run a daily newspaper. The closest is Mr. Finkelstein, the owner of The Hill, which reports on Congress.
Final bids are due this week, though this is less a bidding war than a matter of how much liability a potential buyer is willing to assume. Interest seems light. Wealthy people are typically drawn to media properties as a means to expand their influence.
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