Outlet profile

Dayton Daily News

U.S. center

Owned byCox Enterprises, Inc. (privately held, Atlanta, Georgia); operated under Cox's Ohio Newspapers division alongside the Springfield News-Sun and the Journal-News

FundingAdvertising (via Cox First Media) and digital/print subscriptions; no state or donor funding

On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

The Dayton Daily News was founded on August 22, 1898, when Ohio politician James M. Cox purchased the struggling Dayton Evening News for $26,000 and relaunched it under the new name. Cox went on to become a two-term Ohio governor and the 1920 Democratic presidential nominee, and his family's media holdings eventually grew into Cox Enterprises, one of the largest privately held companies in the United States. The paper remained a Cox family property for most of its existence, though Cox sold a cluster of Ohio newspapers—including the Dayton Daily News—to Apollo Global Management in 2019 as part of a broader restructuring of its print assets. Cox Enterprises reversed course and repurchased the papers in February 2020, keeping them out of full private-equity ownership. The paper has faced the same pressures as most regional dailies—staff reductions, print-run cutbacks, and delivery disruptions, including a reported printing failure in May 2026. Editorially, the paper has moved away from formal candidate endorsements, stating a preference for providing coverage and letting readers decide. Media-bias analysts at both AllSides and Media Bias/Fact Check rate it as center and factually reliable, with no major fact-check failures on record. Its coverage tends to prioritize southwestern Ohio local news, state politics, and national wire content without a pronounced ideological tilt.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-08-23; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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