Washington Star

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Washington Star logo.png

The Washington Star was an American evening newspaper in Washington, DC , the 1852 as the Daily Evening Star Founded in 1854 in Evening Star has been renamed. The name Washington Star , which the newspaper previously carried colloquially, ran from 1975 to the last edition in 1981. The newspaper was mostly the most important newspaper in the city until the 1950s. Their orientation was conservative.

history

In 1852 the newspaper was founded under the name Daily Evening Star by the printer Joseph Borrows Tate. Two years later, the weekday edition was renamed the Evening Star , while the Sunday edition was renamed the Sunday Star . The newspaper passed through several hands until it was sold in 1867 to a group of owners around Crosby Noyes, Samuel Kauffmann and George Adams. Noyes was the newspaper's star reporter and headed the newsroom. In the 1930s, the newspaper also got into the emerging radio business and at times owned several radio stations.

The name Washington Star did not establish itself until the 1970s . With the takeover of Washington Daily News the published from July 13, 1972 combined output initially was named The Evening Star and the Washington Daily News , which a year later to Washington Star-News shortened and in 1975 Washington Star was changed. During this time the newspaper was also the main protagonist of the Muldergate affair in the USA. The South African Minister of Information, Cornelius Petrus Mulder , on behalf of his South African government, tried to influence public opinion about the apartheid regime with a series of covert propaganda measures from 1973 onwards with considerable financial expenditure . In the USA, the Washington Star was supposed to be bribed through an intermediary. The propaganda measures were exposed by investigative journalists.

For decades, the Washington Evening Star in Washington, DC was the newspaper with the highest circulation. After the Washington Post took over the Washington Times-Herald in 1954, the circulation of the Washington Post rose to around 383,000 copies a day, while the circulation of the Washington Evening Star declined slightly. In the following year the circulation of the Washington Post was for the first time higher than that of the Washington Evening Star , which was able to post significantly more income from the advertising business. That changed in 1959, and by 1971 the Washington Post's advertising revenue was already double that of the Washington Star .

From 1970 the Washington Evening Star posted losses that widened to a deficit of around one million US dollars a year by the mid-1970s. The owner families Noyes, Kauffmann and Adams began looking for an investor. They turned down an offer from John P. McGoff because of his sympathy for the apartheid government in South Africa, but in 1974 found Joe L. Allbritton, another well-funded buyer. The Perpetual Corporation of Delaware , founded by Allbritton for this purpose, initially acquired 10% of the shares in Washington Star Communications Inc , which in addition to the Washington Evening Star also operated local newspapers and regional TV and radio stations, in July 1974 for five million dollars . In the years that followed, Allbritton gradually acquired additional shares while making savings and layoffs. In the second quarter of 1977, at around $ 0.5 million, a positive operating result was achieved again for the first time, while the TV and radio stations brought in around five million. The FCC had already made Allbritton in December 1975, however, to sell the stations operating in the same market until 1978. The radio station WMAL was sold to ABC Radio in 1977 .

On February 3, 1978, Joe L. Allbritton and Time Inc. agreed to sell the Washington Evening Star to Time Inc for $ 20 million and take on current loans. Allbritton retained the three television channels WMAL-TV in Washington, DC, WLVA-TV in Lynchburg and WCIV in Charleston . The Washington Star was in deficit again from 1978. Between April and September 1978, the circulation averaged 349,475 copies on working days and 336,880 copies on Sundays.

In July 1979, a morning edition of the Washington Evening Star , which had previously only appeared in the evening, was introduced to respond to changing reading habits that had contributed to the success of the morning's Washington Post . The circulation of the "full-day newspaper" now marketed as the Washington Star rose only briefly in 1979 and fell to 323,000 copies by 1981.

On August 7, 1981, the newspaper ceased operations and filed for bankruptcy . The Washington Post took over the newspaper's property, real estate, and printing house.

At the Washington Star, a. a. columnist Mary McGrory ; foreign correspondent Andrew Borowiec ; political cartoonist Pat Oliphant ; and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman .

literature

  • Faye Haskins: The Evening Star: The Rise and Fall of a Great Washington Newspaper. ISBN 978-0742548725

Web links

Commons : The Washington Star  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Daily Evening Star (Washington [DC]) 1852-1854. In: Catalog of the Library of Congress. Library of Congress , accessed July 25, 2020 .
  2. ^ Evening Star (Washington, DC) 1854-1972. In: Catalog of the Library of Congress. Library of Congress , accessed July 25, 2020 .
  3. ^ The Evening Star and the Washington Daily News (Washington, DC) 1972-1973. In: Catalog of the Library of Congress. Library of Congress , accessed July 25, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Washington Star-News (Washington, DC) 1973-1975. In: Catalog of the Library of Congress. Library of Congress , accessed July 25, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Washington Star (Washington, DC) 1975-1981. In: Catalog of the Library of Congress. Library of Congress , accessed July 25, 2020 .
  6. ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/remembering-washingtons-shining-star-a-great-newspaper-that-died-in-1981/2019/10/16/32094c36-f02a-11e9-8693-f487e46784aa_story .html
  7. ↑ Anthony Sampson: FOREIGN AFFAIRS Muldergate ' . In: The New York Times . April 8, 1979, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed July 10, 2020]).
  8. ^ Faye Haskins: The Evening Star: The Rise and Fall of a Great Washington Newspaper . Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, ISBN 978-1-5381-0576-4 , pp. 238 (English).
  9. ^ Faye Haskins: The Evening Star: The Rise and Fall of a Great Washington Newspaper . Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, ISBN 978-1-5381-0576-4 , pp. 242-256 (English).
  10. ↑ Stephen J. Lynton: Washington Star Sold To Time for $ 20 Million . In: The Washington Post . February 4, 1978 (English, full text ).
  11. ^ Faye Haskins: The Evening Star: The Rise and Fall of a Great Washington Newspaper . Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, ISBN 978-1-5381-0576-4 , pp. 257-263 (English).
  12. ^ Faye Haskins: The Evening Star: The Rise and Fall of a Great Washington Newspaper . Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, ISBN 978-1-5381-0576-4 , pp. 264-265 (English).