The '40s -- -- Newsday.com

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<b>Newsday</b><br>
On the morning of Sept. 3, 1940, in a converted auto dealership in Hempstead, newspaper heiress Alicia Patterson stepped up to a press, pushed a button and watched the birth of her new newspaper. It was a tabloid, like her father's New York Daily News, but one she andher husband, Harry Guggenheim, planned to be decidedly more respectable. "Good afternoon!" read the opening of their debut editorial. "This is the first edition of Newsday to enter your home. We hope it will be a regular visitor, one you will welcome and enjoy."<br>
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The first issue of Newsday had a press run of 30,000 copies Ñ only about half of which were sold. The paper was born to a Long Island that was a collection of quiet suburban communities, sprawling farms and potato fields whose population of 604,000 was served largely by a dozen New York City dailies and more than 100 local weeklies. The only other Long Island-based daily newspaper at the time was the Nassau Daily Review-Star, which folded in 1953. Except for the Suffolk SunÕs brief tenure between 1966 and 1969, Newsday has been the only Long Island daily based outside the city ever since. Following is how some of the past six decades of local history has been presented in the pages of the newspaper that grew with its community.

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Newsday
On the morning of Sept. 3, 1940, in a converted auto dealership in Hempstead, newspaper heiress Alicia Patterson stepped up to a press, pushed a button and watched the birth of her new newspaper. It was a tabloid, like her father's New York Daily News, but one she andher husband, Harry Guggenheim, planned to be decidedly more respectable. "Good afternoon!" read the opening of their debut editorial. "This is the first edition of Newsday to enter your home. We hope it will be a regular visitor, one you will welcome and enjoy."

The first issue of Newsday had a press run of 30,000 copies Ñ only about half of which were sold. The paper was born to a Long Island that was a collection of quiet suburban communities, sprawling farms and potato fields whose population of 604,000 was served largely by a dozen New York City dailies and more than 100 local weeklies. The only other Long Island-based daily newspaper at the time was the Nassau Daily Review-Star, which folded in 1953. Except for the Suffolk SunÕs brief tenure between 1966 and 1969, Newsday has been the only Long Island daily based outside the city ever since. Following is how some of the past six decades of local history has been presented in the pages of the newspaper that grew with its community. (September 3, 1940)

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