Everything about New York Journal American totally explained
The
New York Journal-American was a
newspaper published from 1937 to 1966. The
Journal-American was the product of a merger between two New York newspapers owned by
William Randolph Hearst: The New York
American (originally the
New York Journal, renamed
American in 1901), a morning paper, and the
New York Evening Journal, an afternoon paper. Both were published by Hearst from 1895-1937. The
Journal-American was an afternoon publication. It was at this newspaper that the phrase "
Bulldog Edition" was coined: in 1905, Hearst urged his editors to write headlines that would "bite the public like a bulldog." Hearst was already established in the newspaper business in
San Francisco and ventured to
New York to expand his empire.
Having purchased the newspaper, Hearst entered into a circulation war with the
New York World, the newspaper run by his former mentor
Joseph Pulitzer and from whom he recruited both
George McManus and
Richard F. Outcault. In 1913, McManus created his
Bringing Up Father comic strip, and Outcault brought his comic strip "
The Yellow Kid" to the
New York Journal. This was one of the first comic strips to be printed in color and gave rise to the phrase
yellow journalism, used to describe the sensationalist and often dishonest articles, which helped, along with a one-cent price tag, to greatly increase circulation of the newspaper. Many believed that as part of this, aside from any nationalistic sentiment, Hearst may have helped to initiate the
Spanish-American War of 1898 to increase sales.
Rube Goldberg was a later cartoonist with the
Journal-American. Popular columnists were
O. O. McIntyre,
Dorothy Kilgallen and
Jimmy Cannon, one of the highest paid sports columnists in the country. Beginning in 1938, Max Kase (1898-1974) was the sports editor for 28 years, and the fashion editor was Robin Chandler Duke.
The newspaper had one of the highest circulations in New York in the 1950s but had difficulties attracting advertising. The newspaper devoted space to the
Beatles, enlisting
Dr. Joyce Brothers to write front-page articles in 1964 that analyzed their fast rise to superstardom. While the Beatles worked on the production of
Help! on the island of New Providence in
the Bahamas the following year, the syndicated columnist Phyllis Battelle interviewed them for articles that ran exclusively on the
Journal-American front page for four consecutive days, from April 25-28, 1965.
Besides trouble with advertisers, another major factor that led to the paper's demise was a power struggle between a Hearst executive named Richard Berlin and two of William Randolph Hearst's sons, who had trouble carrying on the father's legacy after his 1951 death. The son known as Bill Hearst claimed in 1991 that Berlin, who died in 1971, had suffered from
Alzheimer's disease starting in the mid 1960s and that this caused him to shut down several Hearst newspapers without just cause.
When five out of six New York newspapers were struck by a union during September-October 1965 (only the
New York Post continued publishing),
Journal-American officials agreed to merge with their evening rival, the
New York World-Telegram and Sun, and the morning
New York Herald-Tribune. The official reason for the merger was a general decline in the revenue of afternoon newspapers in the face of increasing competition from
Walter Cronkite and other television newscasters who went on the air live in the evening. The combined
New York World Journal Tribune didn't start until several months after the April 1966 expiration of its three components. Its publisher announced that time was needed to sharpen its layout and contents, After the
World Journal Tribune finally went on sale on September 12, 1966, it folded after eight months.
Other evening newspapers that expired following the rise of network news in the 1960s donated their clipping files and many darkroom prints of published photographs to libraries. The
Hearst Corporation, however, decided to donate only the "basic back-copy morgue" of the
Journal-American to the
University of Texas at Austin. Everything else, including office memorandums, letters from celebrities, photographs, clipping files and indexes, was shredded in 1966,
The paper is preserved on microfilm. The newspaper was famous for its many photographs that were credited as "Journal-American Photo," many of them enlarged until they occupied half of a broadsheet page, but they exist only on microfilm, and no index is available.
Pete Hamill has portrayed the
New York Journal-American negatively in books about the New York of his youth and on the 1997 television documentary
David Halberstam's The Fifties broadcast on the
A&E Network. Hamill emphasizes the paper's vicious anti-communist stance during the
McCarthy Era and its large headlines screaming about the dangers of "red" countries.
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