 Front page of the August 7, 1945 edition ofNew York World-Telegram, featuring theatomic bombing of Hiroshima | |
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Founder | James Gordon Bennett |
| Founded | 1867 RenamedNew York World-Telegram and The Sun in 1950 |
| Ceased publication | 1966 |
| Headquarters | New York City, U.S. |
TheNew York World-Telegram, later known as theNew York World-Telegram and The Sun, was aNew York City newspaper from 1931 to 1966.
Founded byJames Gordon Bennett Sr. asThe Evening Telegram in 1867, the newspaper began as the evening edition ofThe New York Herald, which itself published its first issue in 1835. Following Bennett's death, newspaper and magazine ownerFrank A. Munsey purchasedThe Telegram in June 1920. Munsey's associate Thomas W. Dewart, the late publisher and president of theNew York Sun, owned the paper for two years after Munsey died in 1925 before selling it to theE. W. Scripps Company for an undisclosed sum in 1927. At the time of the sale, the paper was known asThe New York Telegram, and it had a circulation of 200,000.[1]
The newspaper became theWorld-Telegram in 1931, following the sale of theNew York World by the heirs ofJoseph Pulitzer toScripps Howard.[1] More than 2,000 employees of the morning, evening and Sunday editions of theWorld lost their jobs in the merger, although some star writers, includingHeywood Broun andWestbrook Pegler, were kept on the new paper.
TheWorld-Telegram enjoyed a reputation as a liberal paper for some years after the merger, based on memories of the Pulitzer-ownedWorld. However, under Scripps Howard the paper moved steadily to the right, eventually becoming a conservative bastion described by the press criticA.J. Liebling as "Republican, anti-labor, and suspicious of anything European." He also called the paper "the organ of New York's displaced persons (displaced from the interior of North America)".[2]
In October1936 the papers reporterH. R. Ekins won a raceto travel around the world on commercial airline flights, beatingDorothy Kilgallen of theNew York Journal andLeo Kieran ofThe New York Times. The race took 18 ½ days.
In 1940, the paper carried a series of articles entitled "The Rape of China," which usedWalter Judd's experiences with Japanese soldiers as the basis of support for a campaign to boycott Japanese goods. PublisherRoy Howard, an expert of sorts after travelling to Manchuria and Japan in the early 1930s, gave extensive coverage of Japanese atrocities in China.[3] The paper's headline of December 8, 1941, read "1500 Dead in Hawaii" in its coverage of Japan'sattack on Pearl Harbor.
In 1950, the paper was renamed theNew York World-Telegram and The Sun after the Dewart family sold Scripps the remnants of another New York afternoon paper, theThe Sun.[4] Liebling once describedThe Sun on the combined publication'snameplate as resembling the tail feathers of a canary on the chin of a cat.
Beginning in July 1956, the paper became a center of attention when its reporters Gene Gleason andFred J. Cook launched an investigative series on New York City Parks CommissionerRobert Moses. Gleason and Cook focused on possible corruption in how Moses was implementing "Title I: Slum Clearance & Community Development & Redevelopment" of the U.S.Housing Act of 1949. The information they revealed in theWorld-Telegram and Sun was a vital resource forRobert Caro'sPulitzer Prize-winning biography of Moses entitledThe Power Broker (1974).[5]
Early in 1966, a proposal to create New York's firstjoint operating agreement (JOA) led to the merger of theWorld-Telegram and The Sun with Hearst'sJournal American. The intention was to produce a joint afternoon edition, with a separate morning paper to be produced by theHerald Tribune. The last edition of theWorld-Telegram and The Sun was published on April 23, 1966.[6] But when strikes prevented the JOA from taking effect, the papers instead united in August 1966 to become the short-livedNew York World Journal Tribune, which lasted only until May 5, 1967. Its closure left New York City with three daily newspapers:The New York Times,New York Post, andNew York Daily News.
The archives of the paper are not available online, but they can be accessed at theLibrary of Congress, theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison,[7] and at several research facilities in the state of New York.
