NEW YORK

The owner of two of the country’s largest newspapers has purchased the Daily News, a New York tabloid that is famous for generations of hard-punching reporting and irreverent headlines but that has struggled recently to find its place in the digital age.

Chicago-based Tronc Inc., the publisher of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, announced the deal Monday night.

The purchase gives Tronc and its chairman, Michael Ferro, who spent most of his childhood on Long Island, another big brand name in old-school journalism.

The big question will be whether the company can find a way to make the newspaper lucrative again. The Daily News won a Pulitzer Prize this year but has suffered through rounds of layoffs and declining circulation.

Tronc CEO Justin Dearborn said acquiring the paper and its popular website would “provide us with another strategic platform for growing our digital business, expanding our reach and broadening our services for advertisers and marketers,” and both Tronc and Daily News executives said the company would maintain the quality of the paper’s journalism.

“Over the past near-century, the New York Daily News has served New York City and its surrounding areas with its award-winning journalism and helped shape the dynamics of the city,” the outgoing News owner, Mort Zuckerman, said in a release. A New York real estate magnate, he had owned the paper since 1993.

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