The New York Post (NY Post), founded as the New York Evening Post (originally New-York Evening Post), is an American conservativeAttributed to multiple sources:
daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The Post also operates three online sites: NYPost.com; Page Six, a gossip site; and Decider, an entertainment site. The newspaper was founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, a Federalist and Founding Father who was appointed the nation's first secretary of the treasury by George Washington. Its most notable 19th-century editor was William Cullen Bryant. The newspaper became a respected broadsheet in the 19th century.
In the mid-20th century, the newspaper was owned by Dorothy Schiff, who developed the tabloid format that has been used by the newspaper since. In 1976, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp bought the Post for US$30.5 million (equivalent to $ in ). Since its acquisition by News Corp, the Post has been frequently criticized over the years for its controversial headlines and editorial choices along with accusations of bias in its political coverage.
the New York Post is the third-largest newspaper by print circulation among all U.S. newspapers.
History
19th century
The Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton with about $10,000, , from a group of investors in the autumn of 1801 as the New-York Evening Post,Allan Nevins, The Evening Post: Century of Journalism, Boni and Liveright, 1922, p. 17. a broadsheet. Hamilton's co-investors included other New York members of the Federalist Party, including Robert Troup and Oliver WolcottNevins, p. 14. who were dismayed by the election of Thomas Jefferson as U.S. president and the rise in popularity of the Democratic-Republican Party.Emery & Emery At a meeting held at Archibald Gracie's weekend villa, which is now Gracie Mansion, Hamilton recruited the first investors for the new paper.Nevins, pp. 17–18. Hamilton chose William Coleman as his first editor.
The most notable 19th-century Evening Post editor was the abolitionist and poet William Cullen Bryant. So well respected was the Evening Post under Bryant's editorship, it received praise from the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, in 1864.Nevins, p. 341. "Except for the Tribune, it had more effect upon public policies than any other journal in the 1840's and 1850's". p. 62. In addition to literary and drama reviews, William Leggett began to write political editorials for the Post. Leggett espoused a fierce opposition to central banking and support for the organization of labor unions. He was a member of the Equal Rights Party. In 1831, he became a co-owner and editor of the Post, eventually working as sole editor of the newspaper while Bryant traveled in Europe in 1834 and 1835.
One of the co-owners of the paper during this period was John Bigelow. pp. 56-67. Born in Malden-on-Hudson, New York, Bigelow graduated in 1835 from Union College, where he was a member of the Sigma Phi Society and the Philomathean Society, and was admitted to the bar in 1838. From 1849 to 1861, he was one of the editors and co-owners of the Evening Post. Another owner with Bryant and Bigelow was Isaac Henderson.Mayer-Sommer, Alan P. (May 2010). "So many controls; so little control: The case of Isaac Henderson, Navy Agent at New York, 1861-4 ". Accounting History. 15 (2): 173–198. doi:10.1177/1032373209359324. ISSN 1032-3732. S2CID 155059092. Retrieved July 15, 2020. In 1877, this led to the involvement of his son Isaac Henderson Jr., who became the paper's publisher, stockholder, and member of its board, just five years after graduating from college."Isaac Austin Henderson", Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. Volume 7, 1913, retrieved May 16, 2022 Henderson Sr.'s 33-year tenure with the Evening Post ended in 1879, when it was learned that he had defrauded Bryant the entire time. Henderson Jr. sold his interest in the newspaper in 1881.
In 1881, Henry Villard took control of the Evening Post and The Nation, which became the Posts weekly edition. With this acquisition, the paper was managed by the triumvirate of Carl Schurz, Horace White, and Edwin L. Godkin.Nevins, p. 438. When Schurz left the paper in 1883, Godkin became editor-in-chief.Nevins, p. 458. White became editor-in-chief in 1899, and remained in that role until his retirement in 1903."Horace White Dies ," The New York Times, September 17, 1916.Nevins, pp. 440–441. In 1897, both publications passed to the management of Villard's son, Oswald Garrison Villard,Webster's Biographical Dictionary, G. & C. Miriam Co., 1964, p. 1522. a founding member of the NAACP;Christopher Robert Reed, The Chicago NAACP and the Rise of Black Professional Leadership, 1910–1966, Indiana University Press, 1997, p. 10. he was also a founder of the American Anti-Imperialist League.
20th century
Villard sold the newspaper in 1918 following widespread allegations of pro-German sympathies during World War I hurt the newspaper's circulation. The new owner was Thomas Lamont, a senior partner in the Wall Street firm of J.P. Morgan & Co. Unable to stem the paper's financial losses, he sold it to a consortium of 34 financial and reform political leaders, headed by Edwin Francis Gay, dean of the Harvard Business School, whose members included Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1924, conservative Cyrus H. K. Curtis, publisher of the Ladies Home Journal, purchased the Evening Post, and briefly turned it into a non-sensational tabloid nine years later, in 1933.
In 1928, Wilella Waldorf became drama editor at the Evening Post. She was one of the first women to hold an editorial role at the newspaper,The New York Times, March 13, 1946, p. 29 – Wilella Waldorf (obituary). Wilella Waldorf Dies Aged 46 (obituary) During her time at the Evening Post, she was the only female first-string critic on a New York newspaper.Wilella Waldorf – encyclopedia.com She was preceded by Clara Savage Littledale, the first woman reporter ever hired by the Post and the editor of the woman's page in 1914.Littledale, Clara Savage. Edited by Barbara Sicherman, 1934– and Carol Hurd Green, 1935–; in Notable American Women: The Modern Period (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 458–459 In 1934, J. David Stern purchased the paper, changed its name to the New York Post, and restored its broadsheet size and liberal perspective. For four months of that same year, future U.S. Senator from Alaska Ernest Gruening was an editor of the paper. In 1939, Dorothy Schiff purchased the paper. Her husband George Backer was named editor and publisher.Deborah G. Felder & Diana L. Rosen, Fifty Jewish Women Who Changed the World, Citadel Press, 2003, p. 164. Her second editor and third husband Ted Thackrey became co-publisher and co-editor with Schiff in 1942. Together, they recast the newspaper into its modern-day tabloid format.
In 1945, The Bronx Home News merged with it. In 1949, James Wechsler became editor of the paper, running both the news and the editorial pages. In 1961, he turned over the news section to Paul Sann and stayed on as editorial page editor until 1980. Under Schiff's tenure the Post was seen to have liberal tilt, supporting trade unions and social welfare, and featured some of the most popular columnists of the time, such as Joseph Cookman, Drew Pearson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Max Lerner, Murray Kempton, Pete Hamill, and Eric Sevareid, theater critic Richard Watts Jr., and gossip columnist Earl Wilson. In November 1976, it was announced that Australian Rupert Murdoch had bought the Post from Schiff with the intention that Schiff would be retained as a consultant for five years. In 2005, it was reported that Murdoch bought the newspaper for US$30.5 million.
The Post at this point was the only surviving afternoon daily in New York City and its circulation under Schiff had grown by two-thirds, particularly after the failure of the competing World Journal Tribune; however, the rising cost of operating an afternoon daily in a city with worsening daytime traffic congestion, combined with mounting competition from expanded local radio and TV news cut into the Posts profitability, although it made money from 1949 until Schiff's final year of ownership, when it lost $500,000. The paper has lost money ever since. In late October 1995, the Post announced plans to change its Monday through Saturday publication schedule and begin issuing a Sunday edition, which it last published briefly in 1989. On April 14, 1996, the Post delivered its new Sunday edition at the cost of 50 cents per paper by keeping its size to 120 pages. The amount, significantly less than Sunday editions from The New York Daily News and The New York Times, was part of the Posts efforts "to find a niche in the nation's most competitive newspaper market".
Because of the institution of federal regulations limiting media cross-ownership after Murdoch's purchase of WNEW-TV, which is now WNYW, and four other stations from Metromedia to launch the Fox Broadcasting Company, Murdoch was forced to sell the paper for $37.6 million in 1988, equivalent to $ in , to Peter S. Kalikow, a real-estate magnate with no experience in the media industry. In 1988, the Post hired Jane Amsterdam, founding editor of Manhattan, inc., as its first female editor, and within six months the paper had toned down the sensationalist headlines. Within a year, Amsterdam was forced out by Kalikow, who reportedly told her "credible doesn't sell...Your big scoops are great, but they don't sell more papers."
In 1993, after Kalikow declared bankruptcy, the paper was temporarily managed by Steven Hoffenberg, a financier who later pleaded guilty to securities fraud, and for two weeks by Abe Hirschfeld,Bob Fenster, Duh! The Stupid History of the Human Race, McMeel, 2000, p. 13. who made his fortune building parking garages. Following a staff revolt against the Hoffenberg-Hirschfeld partnership, which included publication of an issue whose front page featured the iconic masthead picture of founder Alexander Hamilton with a single teardrop running down his cheek, the Post was again purchased in 1993 by Murdoch's News Corporation. This came about after numerous political officials, including Democratic governor of New York Mario Cuomo, persuaded the Federal Communications Commission to grant Murdoch a permanent waiver from the cross-ownership rules that had forced him to sell the paper five years earlier. Without this FCC ruling, the paper would have shut down.
21st century In December 2012, Murdoch announced that Jesse Angelo had been appointed publisher. Various branches of Murdoch's media groups, 21st Century Fox's Endemol Shine North America, and News Corp's New York Post created a Page Six TV nightly gossip show based on and named after the Posts gossip section. A test run in July would occur on Fox Television Stations. The show garnered the highest ratings of a nationally syndicated entertainment newsmagazine in a decade when it debuted in 2017. With Page Six TVs success, the New York Post formed New York Post Entertainment, a scripted and unscripted television entertainment division, in July 2018 with Troy Searer as president.