Boston Herald
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
| Format | tabloid |
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| Owner | Herald Media Inc. |
| Founded | 1982 |
| Headquarters | One Herald Square, Boston, MA 02205 USA |
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| Website: BostonHerald.com | |
The Boston Herald is a tabloid newspaper, the smaller of the two big dailies in Boston, Massachusetts (the other being The Boston Globe), with a daily circulation of 230,543 in September 2005.[1] It has a history that can be traced back through two lineages and two media moguls. Its history involves the Daily Advertiser and the old Boston Herald and it was owned at one point by William Randolph Hearst and later by Rupert Murdoch.
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[edit] History
The Daily Advertiser was established in 1813 in Boston by Nathan Hale. The paper grew to prominence through the 19th century taking over other Boston area papers. In 1904, William Randolph Hearst began publishing his own newspaper in Boston called The American. Hearst ultimately ended up purchasing the Daily Advertiser in 1917. By 1938, the Daily Advertiser had changed to the Daily Record, and The American had become the Sunday Advertiser. A third paper owned by Hearst called the Afternoon Record, which had renamed to Evening American, merged in 1961 with the Daily Record to form the Record American. The Sunday Advertiser and Record American would ultimately be merged in 1972 into a line of newspapers that stretched back to the old Boston Herald.
The old Boston Herald was founded in 1846 by a group of Boston printers jointly under the name of John A. French & Company. The paper was published as a single sheet, two-sided paper that sold for one cent. Its first editor, William O. Eaton, just 22 years old, said "The Herald will be independent in politics and religion; liberal, industrious, enterprising, critically concerned with literacy and dramatic matters, and diligent in its mission to report and analyze the news, local and global."
Even earlier than the Herald, the Boston Traveler was founded in 1825 as a bulletin for stagecoach listings. In 1912, the Herald acquired the Traveler, and after a newspaper strike in 1967, Herald-Traveler Corp. suspended the afternoon "Traveler" to create the Boston Herald Traveler, in 1967.
In 1946, the Herald Traveler organization acquired Boston radio station WHDH. Two years later, WHDH-FM was licensed, and on November 26, 1957, WHDH-TV made its début as an ABC affiliate on channel 5. In 1961, WHDH-TV's affiliation switched to CBS. Herald-Traveler Corp. operated for years under temporary authority from the Federal Communications Commission stemming from controversy over luncheon meetings the newspaper's chief executive had with an FCC commissioner during the original licensing process. (Some Boston broadcast historians accuse the Boston Globe of being covertly behind the proceeding. The Herald Traveler was Republican in sympathies, and the Globe was allied with the Kennedy family interests, although at the time of the licensing dispute, the Globe had a firm policy of not endorsing political candidates, and the proceedings regarding the WHDH-TV license were initiated long before John F. Kennedy was elected president.) The FCC ordered a comparative hearing, and in 1969 a competing applicant, Boston Broadcasters, Inc. was granted a construction permit to replace WHDH-TV on channel 5. The Herald Traveler fought the decision in court -- by this time, revenues from channel 5 were all but keeping the newspaper afloat -- but its final appeal ran out in 1972 and on March 19 WHDH-TV was forced to surrender channel 5 to the new WCVB-TV.
Without a television station to subsidize the newspaper, the Herald Traveler was no longer able to remain in business, and the newspaper was sold to Hearst which published the rival all-day newspaper the Record American. The two papers were merged to become an all-day paper called the Boston Herald-Traveler and Record American in the morning and "Record-American and Boston Herald Traveler" in the afternoon. The p.m. edition was soon dropped and the unwieldy name shortened to "Boston Herald American." The paper became a tabloid newspaper in September 1981. On December 20, 1982, the paper was purchased by Rupert Murdoch, who changed its name back to the Boston Herald. The Herald continued to grow over the ensuing decades, expanding its coverage and increasing its circulation until the early 21st century, when circulation and advertising revenue dropped -- part of a phenomenon affecting almost all American newspapers in an expanding age of free media. The paper retrenched into its "Record American" roots and was retooled as a more sensationalist publication on the hope that boosting street sales would keep the paper alive.
[edit] Ownership Changes
In February 1994, News Corporation was forced to sell the paper, in order that its subsidiary Fox Television Network could legally consummate its purchase of Fox affiliate WFXT (Channel 25). Patrick Purcell, who was the publisher of the Boston Herald and a News Corporation executive, purchased the Herald and established it as an independent newspaper. Several years later, Purcell would give the Herald a suburban presence it never had by purchasing the money-losing Community Newspaper Company from Fidelity Investments. Although the companies merged under the banner of Herald Media, Inc., the suburban papers maintained their distinct editorial and marketing identity.
After years of operating profits at Community Newspaper and losses at the Herald, Purcell in 2006 sold the suburban chain to newspaper conglomerate Liberty Group Publishing of Illinois, which soon after changed its name to GateHouse Media. The deal, which also saw GateHouse acquiring the Patriot Ledger and the Brockton Enterprise, netted $225 million for Purcell, who vowed to use the funds to clear the Herald's debt and reinvest in the tabloid.
The Herald is conservative in its editorial stances, making it an alternative for the mainly liberal Boston Globe.
[edit] Awards
The Herald's four Pulitzer Prizes for editorial writing, in 1924, 1927, 1949 and 1954, are among the most awarded to a single newspaper in the category. Herald photographer Stanley Forman received two Pulitzer Prizes consecutively in 1976 and 1977, the first being a dramatic shot of a young child falling in mid-air from her mother's arms on the upper stories of a burning apartment building to the waiting arms of firefighters below, and the latter being of Ted Landsmark, an African American city official, being beaten with an American flag during Boston's school busing crisis. In 2006 the "Herald" won two SABEW awards from The Society of American Business Editors and Writers for its breaking news coverage of the takeover of local company Gillette Co. and for overall excellence.[citation needed]
[edit] Columnists
- In March 2004, the Herald hired Mike Barnicle, a local columnist fired by rival The Boston Globe in 1998 for journalistic fraud that was in part uncovered in a report on the Herald's online site. In early 2005, Barnicle left the paper as a full-time contributor as the Herald announced a downsizing of staff, saying he did not want to draw his salary while longtime workers were in danger of losing their jobs.
- Howie Carr is a front page columnist who also hosts a talk show on WRKO. Carr writes extensively on local politics.
- Brett Arends, a business columnist, writes about the city's best-known institutions and figures, from Harvard University and Fidelity Investments, to Red Sox owner John Henry.
- Margery Eagan and Peter Gelzinis are longtime metro columnists, as is Joe Fitzgerald, who was formerly a sports columnist.
- Gerry Callahan is a sports columnist and talk show host for WEEI.
- Steve Buckley is a longtime sports columnist.
- Tony Massarotti is a baseball columnist for the paper.
- Howard Bryant (sports), Robin Washington (consumer and transportation), Leonard Greene (metro) and Howard Manly (metro, op-ed) were African American columnists at the newspaper in the 1990s and 2000s. All have since left the paper.
David Exum covers NASCAR for the Boston Herald and works as an online news editor.
[edit] References
- Sterling Quinlan, The Hundred Million Dollar Lunch (Chicago, J.P. O'Hara, 1974), ISBN 0-87955-310-3.
- Steve Bailey and Robert Gavin, "Herald's owner to sell suburban papers; deal is put at $225m," The Boston Globe, May 6, 2006. [2]
