Thursday, October 1, 2026
The New York Daily News has had its share of hardships in recent years. Circulation and profits have declined, staffers have been laid off and the owner tried unsuccessfully to sell the tabloid.
Now a longtime Rockville Centre resident is being asked to turn it around.
Arthur Browne, whose career at the News has spanned four decades in various capacities, was named the editor in chief on Oct 18. He replaced Jim Rich, who held the position for just over a year, in a sudden move made by owner Mort Zuckerman.
Browne, 65, is a longtime Newser. He started out as a copy boy in 1973 and later became a reporter, editor, managing editor and editorial page editor, where he led his staff to a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for editorials on ground zero workers and their health problems. But last month, he received an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“I devoted virtually all of my professional career to the Daily News,” he said. “. . . I am now extraordinarily privileged and thrilled to lead a publication that I’ve given my heart and soul to for more than 40 years.”
Browne declined to elaborate on how he was approached for the job, but said the offer was unexpected. “It was not in my life plans at the moment that my wife, Gretchen, and I had,” he said. “The opportunity came along, so I took it happily.”
The Daily News has been a revolving door for editors in chief in recent times. Browne is the 13th person to hold the position since Zuckerman took over the paper in 1993, and the third in 13 months. Rich’s predecessor, Colin Myler, was there for three and a half years.
“I just think he’s going to do an excellent job,” said Josh Greenman, a 10-year News employee who took over as the editorial page editor. “I know he’s got a very strong strategic sense, and he’s also listening very carefully to what people want to do with the paper and what is possible.”
Like many other newspapers across the country, circulation and profits have declined at the News, likely because of a technological shift in which readers can now read the paper for free on its website and app, and there have been layoffs. Zuckerman attempted to sell the Daily News last year, but had no takers.
Add that to the intense competition for readers with The New York Times and New York Post, and you have a position that normally comes with high pressure and stress. But Browne doesn’t see it that way. “I don’t feel pressure, I feel joy.” he said. “This is the passion of my life. If you are empowered to live out the passion of your life, it’s not pressure-filled, it’s fun-filled.”
Browne is in his second tour of duty with the Daily News. In 2000, after being dissatisfied with an editor, he left to help start a veterinary medicine website, and later became a senior editor at Bloomberg News. But he wasn’t comfortable with the direction his career was heading, and returned to the News about two years later at Zuckerman’s urging.
“I never had an ambition to be a business news reporter,” he said. “I understood general business news, but when you go to work at Bloomberg News, you get an MBA in finance by having to do hard-core business news. After the two years or so there, I had maxed out on my interest in business news. So, I came back as the editorial page editor.”
Browne and his editorial staff began working on a series of articles that documented the illnesses that afflicted 9/11 first responders, and the inability of state and national governments to recognize the connection between those ailments and ground zero.
The publicity that the articles received was one of the factors that led the House and Senate to extend the Zadroga Act, which provides funding for health care programs for those affected by the events of 9/11, and also reopens a fund for those who were injured or died as a result of what happened that day and afterward. The act was extended for 75 years in 2015.
“Because of that series of editorials, the government, Washington, New York City, New York state recognized that there was widespread illness and that people were dying because of it,” Browne said. “And up to that point, officials in New York and Washington had refused to believe that there was widespread illness. But the series documented it and forced what eventually became known in Washington as the Zadroga Bill. So that was the most gratifying possible experience you can have in journalism.”
Browne also recalled covering a plane crash at Kennedy Airport one afternoon in 1975, in which 109 people were killed after a Boeing 727 jet failed to navigate a landing during an electrical storm. Because the Daily News office was in Queens at the time, he was one of the first people to arrive on the scene.
“I raced down the Van Wyck Expressway and got to the site of a plane crash just as the first police officers and firefighters were getting there,” he said. “The crusty, old, tough, city editor of the day said to me, ‘When you get to the scene, count the bodies.’ That’s what I did. I walked around the field and I counted the torsos.”
Browne also wrote about the life of the “Son of Sam,” David Berkowitz, one day after he was captured; the blackout and riots in 1977; and six city mayors. He made news last spring by catching Democratic presidential nominee Bernie Sanders offguard several times with tough questions while interviewing him during the New York primary.
Browne is a 38-year resident of Rockville Centre, where he and his wife raised four children, who all attended Jennie E. Hewitt Elementary School. He also has 11 grandchildren.
