Dayton Daily News

Dayton Daily News

The July 9, 2009 front page of the Dayton Daily News
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner	Cox Enterprises
Publisher	Julia Wallace
Editor	Jana Collier
Founded	1898
Headquarters	1611 South Main Street Dayton, Ohio 45409  United States
Circulation	Mon.-Wed.: 89,858 Thurs.: 140,316 Fri.: 106,640 Sat.: 95,551 Sun.: 144,375 [1]
ISSN	0897-0920
OCLC number	232118157
Official website	daytondailynews.com

The Dayton Daily News (DDN) is a daily newspaper published in Dayton, Ohio. It is owned by Cox Enterprises. In the 2010 Associated Press Society of Ohio newspaper competition that takes place every year, DaytonDailyNews.com was named "the best large-newspaper web site in Ohio".^[2]

History

On August 15, 1898, James M. Cox purchased the Dayton Evening News. One week later, on August 22, 1898 he renamed it the Dayton Daily News.

The paper was founded with the intention of pioneering a new type of journalism, keeping weak ties to politicians and advertisers while seeking objectivity and public advocacy as primary functions. These goals pushed the paper in the direction of valuing the public interest.^[3]

A Sunday edition was launched on November 2, 1913. In 1948, Cox purchased two morning papers, The Journal and The Herald, from the Herrick-Kumler Company. The next year he combined them to form The Journal Herald.^[4]

For the next four decades, The Journal-Herald was the conservative morning paper, and the Dayton Daily News (which had a larger circulation) was the liberal evening paper. The papers operated newsrooms on separate floors of the same building in downtown Dayton. On September 15, 1986, The Journal-Herald and the Daily News were merged to become a morning paper, the Dayton Daily News and Journal-Herald, with both names appearing on the front page. The Journal-Herald name last appeared on the paper's front-page flag on December 31, 1987.

The newspaper's editorial position traditionally has been thought of as liberal, reflecting the historical voting habits of local readers as well as the person who gave the paper its current name, but over the past decade the editorial board favored Republican and Democratic candidates more equally and tended to favor incumbents of either party over challengers. In 2011, the paper stopped endorsing candidates for office and its news coverage tilted conservative, taking a noticeable pro-business, anti-labor and anti-government posture.

Cox was the Democratic Party's candidate for U.S. President in the election of 1920, and the city of Dayton has voted for the Democratic candidate in presidential elections since. Cox's running mate for vice president was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected president in 1932.

Although Cox was a champion of organized labor, the newspaper and its parent company have long had a hostile relationship with its own unions. In 1999 it locked out truck drivers after a one-day job action during labor negotiations. The company ultimately paid $1 million in compensation to the workers after a six-year court battle. The Daily News has stonewalled its editorial union -- representing reporters, photographers, copy editors, editorial assistants and artists -- for more than a quarter century, refusing to agree to a contract since one signed in 1986 expired in 1989. In 2007, the paper declared impasse after nearly a year of renewed contract talks with the editorial union, imposing its final offer.

In 1998, reporters Russell Carollo and Jeff Nesmith won the Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on dangerous flaws and mismanagement in the military health care system, a series very relevant to its readership because of the presence of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in neighboring Greene County.

The paper is the home of cartoonist Mike Peters, who draws the Mother Goose and Grimm strip and won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1981, and columnist Dale Huffman, who had written a daily metro column every day for more than eight years before beginning a hiatus on January 30, 2008 after he was diagnosed with kidney cancer.

In 2006, the paper enacted a major editorial "reinvention" intended to attract light, young and occasional readers and allowing for a major reduction in the size of the paper and the amount of space for news stories. The result was thousands of canceled subscriptions. Most of the changes associated with reinvention -- short stories, heavy use of graphics, lists and boxes and a rule preventing section front stories from continuing on inside pages, were abandoned in 2011 as part of an effort to end the deep slide in subscriptions. The newspaper has since returned its focus to traditional journalism, including an emphasis on rooting out government waste.

The paper was led by Jeff Bruce as editor from 1998 to 2008. Bruce replaced Max Jennings, who retired. When Bruce retired in 2007 Kevin Riley, 44, a graduate of the University of Dayton was named editor. Riley spent most of his career with the paper, starting as a copy editor and later serving as sports editor, Internet general manager, and publisher of the Springfield News-Sun in Springfield, Ohio. He was promoted from deputy editor.

In 2010, Riley was named editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and that paper's editor, Julia Wallace, was moved to Dayton to head a new combined newspaper, television and radio newsroom. She was soon after named publisher and Jana Collier promoted to editor from managing editor. In July of 2011 Wallace fired editorial page editor Ellen Belcher and revamped the editorial page, which no longer writes traditional editorials and is overseen by Ron Rollins, who has the title of associate editor.

The paper's editorial offices were in downtown Dayton for more than 100 years. Since 1999, the paper has been printed at a modern facility near Interstate 75 in Franklin, about fifteen miles to the south. In April, 2007, the newspaper's editorial and business offices moved to the former NCR Building 31 at 1611 S. Main St. on Dayton's south side, near the University of Dayton campus and suburban Oakwood. In late 2010/early 2011 the studios of sister television station WHIO-TV was relocated to the new facility.

The fate of the paper's historic downtown building is unknown. For now, it sits empty and unused.

Notable employees

The following people at some point worked at or wrote for the Dayton Daily News:

• Erma Bombeck (at The Herald)
• Si Burick
• Ritter Collett (at The Journal-Herald)
• James M. Cox
• Dale Huffman
• Hal McCoy
• Jeff Nesmith
• Mike Peters
• John Scalzi
• Myron Scott
• Dennis Shere
• Dann Stupp

Bibliography

• Dayton Ink. Dayton, Ohio: The Dayton Daily News, 1998.

References

Citations

1. ^ "Cox Media Group Ohio, Dayton Daily News Total Paid Circulation". March 2010. http://www.cmgohio.com/?x=products/daytondailynews&menuID=ddn. 
2. ^ "DDN Website Award". http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/ohio-news/daytondailynews-com-wins-best-web-site-award-in-ohio-news-site-contest-683607.html. Retrieved 2007-03-02. 
3. ^ Cayton 2002, p. 209
4. ^ Zumwald, Teresa (1998). "Dayton Daily News history: James M. Cox, Publisher". Dayton Daily News. http://www.daytondailynews.com/history/content/service/info/history/cox.html. Retrieved 2007-03-02. 

Sources

• Cayton, Andrew Robert Lee (2002), Ohio: the history of a people, Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, ISBN 978-0814208991 

External links

	Ohio portal
	Journalism portal

• Official site
• Official mobile site
• History of James M. Cox and the Dayton Daily News