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Newsday is the only daily newspaper in Long Island, N.Y. It is owned by Cablevision.
The paper, which has a tabloid format, was founded in 1940. It is the United States’ 13th-largest daily newspaper, with about 400,000 in daily paid circulation, including print and online, as of 2012. In 2010, the paper’s circulation suffered double-digit declines. Newsday began publishing a New York edition in 1985 called New York Newsday, which, unable to make a profit, was closed in 1995. Newsday currently publishes amNewYork, a free commuter paper that is also New York’s top-circulation daily.
Newsday was sold to the Tribune Company in 2000 and was soon discovered to have falsified its circulation numbers, a scandal that led to several employees’ convictions on criminal charges in 2006.
Newsday was bought by the telecommunications company Cablevision in 2008 for $650 million. Cablevision’s owners, James and Charles Dolan, have often been accused of meddling with the paper by, for example, refusing to run ads for the competing Verizon or critical of Cablevision and limiting negative coverage of sports teams the Dolans own.
Newsday has lost money since at least 2005. The paper accounts for just 4 percent of the overall revenue for Cablevision, which remains profitable.
In 2009, Newsday put its website behind a paywall, making it available to the paper’s print subscribers and most Cablevision customers, which covers about three-quarters of Long Island residents. Online-only subscriptions start at $5 per week for the first eight weeks. The plan was intended not so much to bring revenue to the newspaper as to protect the company’s cable product.
Three months after the paywall was implemented, however, only 35 people had signed up as paid subscribers. After two months, traffic to the site fell by about a third.
Newsday launched a Westchester-focused news site in 2012 and shut it down the following year.
The Zonie Report was a local online news site that covered the state of Arizona. The Report ran from 2006 to March 2010, when its founder and editor, Adam Klawonn, shut it down to focus on his work at Phoenix magazine and a mobile light-rail publication called CityCircles. The Report lost money and had a…
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