New York Journal American

New York Journal American

The front page of the June 26, 1905 issue of the New York American, prior to merger. The murder of Stanford White is its headline.
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner	William Randolph Hearst (1895-1951) William Randolph Hearst, Jr. (1951-1966)
Publisher	Hearst Corporation
Founded	1895 1937 (merger)
Headquarters	New York

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 to 1937. The Journal American was an afternoon publication.

History

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 stole both George McManus and Richard F. Outcault. On January 31, 1912, Hearst introduced the nation's first full daily comics page in the Evening Journal.^[1] In 1913, McManus created his Bringing Up Father comic strip, and Outcault brought The Yellow Kid strip 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.

The Evening Journal was home to famed investigative reporter Nellie Bly, who began writing for the paper in 1914 as a war correspondent from the battlefields of World War I. Bly eventually returned to the United States and was given her own column that she wrote right up until her death in 1922.

One of the New York Journal's most infamous cartoons, depicting Philippine-American War General Jacob H. Smith's order "Kill Everyone over Ten," from the front page on May 5, 1902.

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,^[2] and the fashion editor was Robin Chandler Duke.^[3]

The newspaper was famous for its many photographs that carried the "Journal-American Photo" credit line. With one of the highest circulations in New York in the 1950s, it nevertheless had difficulties attracting advertising.^[4] 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 on the Journal-American front page and in other Hearst papers, including the Los Angeles Herald Examiner for four consecutive days, from April 25 to 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.^[5]

The Journal American ceased publishing in April 1966, officially the victim of 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.

While participating in a lock-out in 1965 after the New York Times and New York Daily News had been struck by a union, the Journal American agreed it would merge (the following year) with its evening rival, the New York World-Telegram and Sun, and the morning New York Herald-Tribune. According to its publisher, publication of the combined New York World Journal Tribune was delayed for several months after the April 1966 expiration of its three components because of difficulty reaching an agreement with manual laborers who were needed to operate the press. The World Journal Tribune commenced publication on September 12, 1966, but folded eight months later.

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 plus darkroom prints and negatives to the University of Texas at Austin.^[6] Office memorandums and letters from politicians and other notables were shredded in 1966.^[6] The paper is preserved on microfilm in New York, Washington, DC and Austin, Texas. One must know the date of an article to locate it. The Journal Americian morgue of clippings, with about nine million items, is at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History and the photo morgue, with about two million prints and one million negatives, is housed in The Harry Ransom Center, both at The University of Texas at Austin.

References

1. ^ Bill Blackbeard; Martin T. Williams (1977). The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics. Smithsonian Institution. pp. 15. ISBN 0874741726. 
2. ^ International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame: Max Kase
3. ^ Larocca, Amy. "Robin Chandler Duke." New York. 19 December 2005.
4. ^ Kluger, Richard, The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune. New York; Alfred A. Knopf, 1986, p. 696.
5. ^ Hearst, William RandolphJr. and Jack Casserly. The Hearsts: Father and Son. New York: Roberts Rinehart, 1991.
6. ^ ^{a b} Israel, Lee. Kilgallen. New York: Delacorte Press, 1979.

External links

• Mr. Hearst's Flagship Sank Like the Maine by Stan Fischler for the Village Voice April 28, 1966
• Database for the photographic morgue at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
• Information on the clippings morgue at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History