The Post-Standard

The Post-Standard

The June 13, 2006 front page of
The Post-Standard
Type Daily newspaper
Format Broadsheet
Owner(s) Advance Publications
Publisher Stephen A. Rogers
Editor Stephen A. Rogers
Founded 1829 (as the Onondaga Standard)
Headquarters Clinton Square
Syracuse, NY 13221
 United States
Circulation 113,991 daily
164,702 Sunday[1]
Website www.syracuse.com

The Post-Standard is the major daily newspaper servicing the greater Syracuse, New York, metro area. Affiliated with Syracuse.com, it is owned by Advance Publications. The Post-Standard features regular political commentary from Sean Kirst. It is home-delivered in the four counties that make up the Syracuse metro area. Additionally, it is available in many retail outlets throughout the North Country and Southern Tier of New York.

History

The Post-Standard was founded in 1829 as the Onondaga Standard. It became The Syracuse Standard in the 1880s and was also known as The Daily Standard and The Weekly Standard. The newspaper merged with the Syracuse Post on New Year's Day in 1899 and at that time the name was changed to The Post-Standard.

Syracuse Standard, logo, January 3, 1884

By 1900, Syracuse, New York, had a population of 135,000 and the publication had a "sworn circulation" of 17,575 daily, 12,571 semi-weekly and 15,195 on Sunday. It was touted as the "A clean, wholesome, aggressive, up-to-date newspaper."[2] The newspaper soon bragged that "The Post-Standard has a larger circulation than any other daily paper between Greater New York and Rochester."[2]

During this time, the Syracuse Herald-Journal also co-existed. The Herald-Journal was the result of the merger of the Syracuse Journal and the Evening Herald in 1939. Soon afterward, William Randolph Hearst's paper, the Sunday American, became known as the Herald American. The Herald-Journal, Herald American, and The Post-Standard all were purchased in 1944 by Samuel I. Newhouse, later benefactor of Syracuse University's acclaimed S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

For the most part, the papers operated independently from each other, outside of ownership. The Post-Standard was published in the morning, the Herald-Journal in the afternoon, and the Herald American on Sundays (which technically served as both the Post and the Herald). These newspapers were known collectively as the Syracuse Newspapers and indeed the Post-Standard is often still referred to today by this term by some locals.

In 1993, the local feature desks were merged into one section, CNY, in reference to Central New York. In 2001, the Herald-Journal folded, leaving one paper, The Post-Standard.

Today, the papers are still owned by the Newhouse family, whose company is named Advance Publications. Along with the Syracuse paper, Advance also publishes Parade, the Staten Island Advance, The Star-Ledger and The Jersey Journal in New Jersey,The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, The Oregonian in Portland, and The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.

The Post-Standard publishes three additional editions: Cayuga, Madison, and Oswego for the other three counties of the metropolitan area. It has seven news bureaus throughout Central New York, as well as one in Albany (the state capital) and Washington, DC.

Before the merger with the evening paper, the Post-Standard was named as among the "10 best newspapers in America with a circulation of under 100,000" by Al Neuharth of USA Today (run by a competing organization). Since the merger, daily circulation has increased to over 140,000. Even outside of its four-county delivery area, the paper is available in many convenience stores and supermarkets from the Canadian to the Pennsylvanian border. The newspaper partly caters to this audience as well, covering many stories from the Ithaca, Utica, and Watertown areas. Since opening a new $40M printing press in 2002, the paper called itself "America's Most Colorful Newspaper," as almost every page contains color.

The Post-Standard gained some national exposure when mentioned briefly in Laurie Halse Anderson's Catalyst in 2002.

By 2012, the circulation of the newspaper plummeted to under 50,000 daily and 95,000 Sunday. This drop caused the newspaper to eliminate 112 jobs by the end of January 2013. Effective February 3, 2013, The Post-Standard will only offer delivery of the newspaper on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. A newspaper will be available daily from that date, online and in stores. This move is similar to Advance's West Michigan newspapers, which also cut back home delivery to three days a week with the newspapers available on the other days in stores and via e-editions to subcribers.

The Post-Standard partners with Syracuse.com to provide its content online.

Winterfest Treasure Hunt

Since 1988, The Post-Standard has been challenging people of Central New York every winter by hiding a treasure hunt medallion in a public park in Onondaga County, New York. Each day during the treasure hunt, The Post-Standard publishes daily clues pointing want-a-be treasure hunters to its location. The person who finds the medallion win's $1,000, double that if they are a newspaper subscriber. In recent years, the medallion has been found at the Camillus Erie Canal Park,[3] Onondaga Lake Park,[4] and Green Lakes State Park.[5]

Investigations

In 2004 and 2005, the Post-Standard published in-depth investigative pieces focusing especially on the inner workings of Albany, including Gov. George Pataki's office and the New York Legislature. Recent investigations have focused on the allocation of state-borrowed money by the leaders of the State Senate and Assembly; and also on the controversy over the secretive sale of public lands along the Erie Canal by the New York State Canal Corporation for less than the land's market value.

References

  1. ↑ "2007 Top 100 Daily Newspapers in the U.S. by Circulation" (PDF). BurrellesLuce. 2007-03-31. Retrieved 2007-05-31.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "A Complete Catalog of Newspapers in the United States". Remington Brothers' Newspaper, New York, 1900. Retrieved 2010-07-10.
  3. ↑ "Years of searching pays off for winner of 2013 Post-Standard | syracuse.com Treasure Hunt".
  4. ↑ "Persistence pays $2,000 for Cicero mother-daughter treasure hunters".
  5. ↑ "24 comments East Syracuse Minoa sophomore finds Treasure Hunt medallion at Manlius park".

External links