By 1993, The Daily News had become the kind of tabloid story typically splashed across its front page: Its owner mysteriously drowned, his money gone, the future murky.
Enter Mortimer B. Zuckerman.
The wealthy new publisher arrived to much fanfare that January, paying $36.3 million for the populist publication billed as New York’s Hometown Paper.
A quarter-century stewardship of the paper ensued, including coverage of 9/11 and its fallout, four mayors and four Presidents, the New York Rangers’ first Stanley Cup in 54 years, and day-to-day life of the nation’s largest city and its citizens — in all its unpredictable glory.
The real estate developer’s long run atop The News ended Monday with his sale of the paper to tronc.
Zuckerman “served as an exemplary steward of this great institution,” said his nephew Eric Gertler in a letter to the staff. “Mort always believed in investing in quality journalism.
“He profoundly cherished the Daily News as the Hometown Newspaper of the greatest city in the world.”
The longtime News publisher also received a rousing ovation in absentia from the staff Tuesday at a town hall meeting with the new owners in the newsroom.
Zuckerman, who turned 80 in June, peddled the paper just four months short of his 25th anniversary on the masthead.
Under Zuckerman, the Daily News earned five Pulitzer Prizes and captured the National Press Club’s prestigious Freedom of the Press Award in 1998 for The News’ efforts on behalf of the First Amendment.
The paper opened its state-of-the-art Jersey City printing plant in 1996, introduced its website three months later and began color printing the next year.
The first Pulitzer of the Zuckerman era came in 1996, too: E.R. Shipp was honored for her columns on race, welfare and other social issues.
In 1998, columnist Mike McAlary — in the middle of a losing fight against colon cancer — won for his exclusive reporting on the horrific police attack against Abner Louima.
“That he did it under the circumstances that he had to work with is an extraordinary tribute, not only to him as a reporter and as a journalist, but as a human being,” Zuckerman said.
The News copped another Pulitzer in 1999 for editorials that rescued Harlem’s legendary Apollo Theater from a likely visit from the wrecking ball.
The fourth Pulitzer came in 2007 for editorials documenting epidemic illnesses among 9/11 rescue and recovery workers. And the latest was just this year, a collaboration with ProPublica exposing widespread abuse of New York’s nuisance abatement laws.
Zuckerman took over The News at one of the paper’s lowest points since its 1919 debut.
British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell purchased the financially troubled News in March 1991 — only to die eight months later after going overboard near the Canary Islands from the deck of his yacht.
Maxwell was quickly revealed as a scammer who looted more than $1 billion from the pension funds of his companies. The News was placed under bankruptcy protection as his “empire went bust.”
Zuckerman stepped up, purchasing the paper and sparing The News from an ink-stained grave. The move came at a cost: There was an immediate layoff of some 170 employees.
“The new Daily News will build on the best traits of the old,” he promised after taking over. “It will be tough, sassy, full of outrage at injustice and street- smart.”
Zuckerman was hardly a regular presence in the newsroom, although he was known to express his feelings in pointed phone calls to a rotating cast of editors-in-chief.
But Zuckerman always loved politics, and appeared for Editorial Board meetings with Gov. Cuomo in April and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
His opinions were often laid out on The News’ Op-Ed pages, where Zuckerman tackled global issues from Israel to the Obama administration’s war on ISIS to the national integrity problem — long before President Trump.
His most recent column blasted since-fired FBI Director James Comey for interfering in last year’s presidential race.
During his tenure, The News also abandoned its iconic “Daily Planet” digs on E. 42nd St. — where the lobby was used as the home for Clark Kent’s fictional Daily Planet.
After 65 years on the East Side, the paper moved to W. 33rd St. in 1995 and eventually to lower Manhattan in 2011.
In November 2012, after the paper was driven from its 4 New York Plaza home by Hurricane Sandy flooding, Zuckerman visited the Jersey City plant, where the staff was relocated on folding chairs and plastic tables.
He roused the waterlogged troops with a speech of support in the plant cafeteria, and the paper never missed a day of publishing despite temporary digs in three different locations.
He also offered a joking apology for the paper’s endorsement of Republican Mitt Romney.
By 2015, Zuckerman was considering a sale of the paper. He was approached by a potential buyer that year, putting the wheels in motion on a possible deal for the paper.
After testing the waters, Zuckerman opted in August of that year to take The News off the market.
“As Mort told me many times, owning the Daily News has been one of the great joys of his life,” Editor-in-Chief Arthur Browne said in the newsroom Tuesday.
