Mortimer Zuckerman
Mortimer Zuckerman attends The New 42nd Street 25th Anniversary Gala at New 42 Street Studios on April 11, 2016 in New York City. Getty Images

Less than a month after its unsuccessful attempt to purchase the Chicago Sun-Times, Tronc, a Chicago-based company, acquired the Pulitzer-Prize winning tabloid, The New York Daily News.

The announcement of the acquisition came Monday. Tronc purchased The Daily News for only $1 million and the assumption of operational and pension liabilities, Chicago Tribune reported.

Tronc is the publisher of The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune among other news outlets, and was formerly known as Tribune Publishing.

"We are excited to welcome the New York Daily News team to the tronc family, and we look forward to working with them to serve new audiences and marketers while delivering value for our shareholders," stated a press release from Tronc, quoting its CEO Justin Dearborn.

"As part of the tronc portfolio, the New York Daily News will provide us with another strategic platform for growing our digital business, expanding our reach and broadening our services for advertisers and marketers," Dearborn added.

The deal brought to an end the 25-year ownership of The Daily News by Mortimer B. Zuckerman, who had bought the paper out of bankruptcy in 1993 for $36 million in cash, reports said.

Along with Zuckerman, Fred Drasner also owned The Daily News, however, he left the company in 2004.

The Daily News was currently going through tough times, characterized by sweeping layoffs. In the 1940s, it used to have a circulation of more than two million a day, but in recent times it had been reduced to just a few hundred thousands.

According to the Daily News Zuckerman had started considering the option of selling the newspaper from 2015, when he informed The News' staff in an email: “A few weeks ago, we were approached about our potential interest in selling the Daily News. Although there were no immediate plans to consider a sale, we thought it would be prudent to explore the possibility and talk to potential buyers and/or investors."

Zuckerman put the publication on sale that year itself and received offers from several wealthy businessmen, including supermarket magnate John A. Catsimatidis.

However, the business tycoon later reconsidered his decision of selling the paper by taking it off the market, the New York Times reported.

Zuckerman is a Canadian-born American businessman whose interests predominantly lie in magazines, publishing, and real estate. He is now a naturalized citizen of the U.S.

He graduated from Harvard Business School, but remained in the university as an associate professor for the next nine years. After that, he also taught at Yale University. He also spent seven years at the real estate firm Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, where he did well and became senior vice president and chief financial officer, according to his biography.

In 1980, he bought the literary magazine The Atlantic Monthly and was the chairman from 1980 to 1999 before selling it to David G. Bradley for US$12 million. In 1984, he bought U.S. News & World Report.

In 2008, he was named the 147th wealthiest American; in 2007, he was the 188th richest man, his biography said citing Forbes.

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