The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions. Since 1993, it has been owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which had owned it previously from 1976 to 1988. It is the sixth-largest newspaper in the U.S. by circulation. Its editorial offices are located at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, in New York City, New York.

The New York Post, established in 1801 as the New-York Evening Post, describes itself as the nation's oldest continuously published daily newspaper. The Hartford Courant, which describes itself as the nation's oldest continuously published newspaper, was founded in 1764 as a semi-weekly paper; it did not begin publishing daily until 1836. The New Hampshire Gazette, which has trademarked its claim of being The Nation's Oldest Newspaper, was founded in 1756, also as a weekly. Moreover, since the 1890s it has been published only for weekends.

The Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton with about US$10,000 from a group of investors in the autumn of 1801 as the New-York Evening Post, a broadsheet. Hamilton's co-investors included other New York members of the Federalist Party, such as Robert Troup and Oliver Wolcott, who were dismayed by the election of Thomas Jefferson as U.S. President and the rise in popularity of the Democratic-Republican Party. The meeting at which Hamilton first recruited investors for the new paper took place in then-country weekend villa that is now Gracie Mansion. Hamilton chose William Coleman as his first editor, but the most-famous 19th-century New-York Evening Post editor was the poet and abolitionist William Cullen Bryant. So well respected was the New-York Evening Post under Bryant's editorship, it received praise from the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, in 1864.