Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio)

The Dayton Daily News (DDN) is a daily newspaper published in Dayton, Ohio. It is owned by Cox Enterprises.

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. A Sunday edition was launched on November 2, 1913. In 1948, Cox purchased two morning papers, The Journal and The Herald, from Colonel Lewis Rock. The next year he combined them to form The Journal Herald.[2]

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 generally 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 in recent years the editorial board has favored Republican and Democratic candidates more equally and tended to favor incumbents of either party over challengers. 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.

In 1998 reporters Russell Carollo and Jeff Nesmith would win 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.

In January 2007, a new editor was named. Kevin Riley, 44, a graduate of the University of Dayton, 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.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 1161 S. Main St. on Dayton's south side, near the University of Dayton campus and suburban Oakwood.

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

(937) 225-2000