The birth of Newsday

Newsday began as a set of training wheels for a flighty young woman with journalism in her genes but not a clue about how to run a paper.

Alicia Patterson was expecting someday to run the New York Daily News, the wildly successful tabloid created from scratch by her father, Joseph Medill Patterson. But her career in reporting at the Daily News had ended in failure. She got the facts wrong in a marital case, spawning a libel suit and causing her father to fire her. Clearly, before she could think about running a city newspaper with a huge circulation, she needed experience with something smaller: a tiny, start-up country newspaper.

So her third husband, the wealthy and conservative Harry F. Guggenheim, helped her start a paper in a former auto dealership in Hempstead, using presses and equipment from a newspaper that had lasted less than two weeks. Mercifully, she rejected a friend's suggestion that she name her new publication The County Irritant and, after a contest, she called it Newsday. Her friends dubbed it Alicia's Toy.

Her planned succession at the Daily News did not materialize, largely because she quarreled with her father about their sharply differing views on President Franklin D. Roosevelt, among other things. So she and her husband stuck with the country paper they had started, and - despite sharp disagreements on finances, politics and other issues - worked more or less together on making Newsday grow.

In the 70 years since Miss P. flipped the switch to start the presses rolling on an error-filled first edition of the paper, Newsday has grown far more than Guggenheim and Patterson could have anticipated, becoming one of the most successful suburban daily newspapers in America.

In the first two decades, Miss P. grew increasingly more surefooted, unafraid to stand up to her husband when necessary, always sure what she wanted to see in the paper. She gave Newsday its sense of independence, its courage and fire.

"She was the greatest newspaperman I've ever known," said Jack Mann, a former sports editor.

In the tiny plant where Newsday was born, she was everywhere, including the composing room floor, where Patterson could be found supervising the layout of pages. "She knew everybody by their first name in the whole building," recalled Al Kunkel, one of the earliest composing room employees.

Miss P., a pilot who set a women's flying record in 1931, was particularly protective of the editorial staff's growing contingent of women. "She was a feminist before the word was even used," said Edna Murray, one of the first full-time accredited news photographers in the metro area.

Newsday's founder did not live to see the paper's 25th anniversary, dying in 1963 at age 56, but she set it well on its way. The paper has had its share of proud moments, including 19 Pulitzers for a wide range of stories, foreign and domestic. It has played a role in issues ranging from the intensely local (helping to change a Town of Hempstead law and clear the way for Levittown, the iconic postwar American suburb) to the world-historical (saving lives in the former Yugoslavia by running Roy Gutman's Pulitzer Prize-winning series revealing the existence of ethnic cleansing camps).

It has also had moments it would like to forget. One was a 1949 editorial blasting those who were demonstrating against a shameful whites-only covenant at Levittown as "Communist-dominated or Communist-inspired." Another was the 2004-05 circulation scandal: Newsday had to pay hefty sums to advertisers who had bought space based on inflated circulation numbers. To the paper's credit, though, it unleashed strong reporters to unearth its own wrongdoing, and it published their work regularly.

From its rough-edged beginnings, it has morphed from a family-owned newspaper to one controlled by corporate chains, including the Tribune Co., started by Alicia Patterson's family. Finally, Cablevision bought the paper, returning it to local ownership.

In 1940, Long Island was a series of small towns separated by vast expanses of trees. Through its news stories and its advertising, Newsday managed to become one of the few links unifying the Island. Today, Newsday still plays that role.

Just as Patterson launched her newspaper at a difficult time, today's Newsday - like all newspapers - is navigating a global economic storm and adjusting to the impact of the Internet. With its website and apps for the iPhone and iPad, the paper is trying to harness the power of the Internet as it continues to sharpen its local focus.

Miss P.'s editorial in the first issue described today's reality: "Any business, to be successful, must have revenue." That hasn't changed. Nor has the simple plan the opening editorial laid out. "Our first, second and final object is to present the news," it said. "If we present the news honestly, we know we will have readers. If we have readers it will be profitable for advertisers to use our columns whether they agree with our policy or not."