| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | Lee Enterprises |
| Publisher | Ava Thomas |
| Editor | Dave Bundy |
| Founded |
|
| Language | English |
| Headquarters |
|
| Country | United States |
| Circulation | 24,985 Daily 36,977 Sunday (as of 2023)[1] |
| ISSN | 1084-5283 |
| OCLC number | 33075139 |
| Website | journalstar |
TheLincoln Journal Star is an American dailynewspaper that servesLincoln, Nebraska, the state capital and home of theUniversity of Nebraska. It is the most widely read newspaper in Lincoln and has the second-largest circulation in Nebraska (after theOmaha World-Herald). The paper also operates a commercial printing unit.
TheLincoln Journal Star is the result of a 1995 merger between the city's two historic longtime daily newspapers. TheLincoln Star, established in 1902 / 1905, was Lincoln's longtime morning newspaper while theLincoln Journal was distributed in the afternoon / evenings. TheJournal was itself the conglomeration over the decades of several previous Lincoln daily newspapers, dating back to 1867 and they beginnings of the change ofNebraska from the oldNebraska Territory (1854-1867) to the 37thstate admitted to the federal Union on March 1, 1867, following its southern neighbor of thestate of Kansas as the 35th in 1861.
On September 7, 1867,[2]Charles Henry Gere founded theNebraska Commonwealth. A member of the prominent Gere family, Gere was aNew York state native andAmerican Civil War (1861-1865) veteran of theUnited States Army /Union Army.[3] As anattorney-at-law who had studied law inBaltimore, Gere quickly became an important figure inNebraska, serving as the private secretary of the formerNebraska Territory (1854-1867), and the new state's first electedGovernor of Nebraska.[3] Gere spearheaded numerous local issues, specifically favoring the idea that all state government functions should be housed in one city as opposed to scattering them across the state.[3] As such, Gere became an important voice in the nascentstate capital town ofLincoln, and theNebraska Commonwealth became its first newspaper.
In 1869, two years after moving theCommonwealth to Lincoln, Gere changed the name of the publication to the Nebraska State Journal.[4] The following year, the newspaper adopted a more frequent publication schedule and become adaily.[3][5] As his publication grew, Gere later retired from practicing law to take a more active part of his newspaper publishing work.[3] Having served in the first election Nebraska governor's administration, the state's organizing constitutional convention, the old upper legislative chamber of theState Senate, the education commission, the committee on railroads, and theUniversity of Nebraska Board of Regents, all were part of publisher / editor Gere's long history of involvement in local politics, civic, and educational affairs with strongly-held views impacted the editorial tone and columns of the Lincoln paper.[3] In one editorial in 1890, Gere famously likened theFarmer's Alliance and its associatedDemocratic Party and future presidential candidate and longtime national standard-bearerWilliam Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) ofLincoln, Nebraska himself, and their allied political offices candidates to "a herd of hogs", criticizing the opposition party of Democrats for disrupting the localRepublican Party of Nebraska's political efforts in the state.[3]
In 1897, J.C. Seacrest, a former reporter for theNebraska State Journal, purchased theLincoln Evening News, which was published by theState Journal as an evening edition.[4] By 1922, Seacrest had changed the name of theLincoln Evening News to theLincoln Evening Journal and become the majority owner of the State Journal Company.[4] Seacrest merged the two publications to create theLincoln Evening Journal & Nebraska State Journal.[6]
In 1902, Lincoln gas and electric power utilities tycoon and millionaireD.E. Thompson established theLincoln Daily Star.[4] Eight years later in 1910, Thompson sold theDaily Star to local grain operator Herbert E. Gooch.[4] Two decades later, the economic / financial and industrial businessesGreat Depression of the1930s, caused publisher / owner Gooch to sell the publication to the Lee Group ofDavenport, Iowa, now known as the newspaper / media syndicate ofLee Enterprises, for $1,000,000 (one million dollars) in 1930.[4] As theGreat Depression wore on and deepened, financial circumstances forced the Seacrests and the Lee Group to buyminority interest shares in each other's companies in 1931 to stay afloat financially.[4] However, the two publications remained independent in New, features and editorial pages, and controlled their own content.[4]
Because the two papers had held minority stakes in each other since 1931, in 1937, J.C. Seacrest created a trust which ensured that theJournal would remain in the possession of the Seacrest family throughout the lifetimes of himself and his sons, Joe W. and Fred S. Seacrest, and their subsequent children. Joe W. and Fred inherited theJournal upon their father's later five years later death in 1942.[4]
However, financial realities forced greater cooperation between theJournal andStar on the business / printing and circulation side. So in 1950, the State Journal Printing Company and Star Printing Company merged into the joint Journal-Star Printing Company.[4] Despite being printed by the same company and sharing offices and printing presses / production facilities, the publications maintained competing news teams and ran separate stories, plus independent editorial staffs.[4] In 1971, Joe W. Seacrest chose his son Joe R. Seacrest and his nephew Mark Seacrest to run theJournal.[4] By 1990, the two papers in Lincoln began running combined thicker editions on Sunday/weekends and major holidays editions.[4]
By 1995, it was obvious that the state capital town of Lincoln could no longer support two separate independent newspapers financially or in face of declining circulation. That March, Lee Enterprises bought theJournal from the Seacrest family, and merged it with theStar.[7] The final separate editions of theJournal andStar were published on August 4, 1995; the first edition of the mergedLincoln Journal Star rolled off the presses on August 7.[4][8]
40°48′54″N96°42′29″W / 40.815°N 96.708°W /40.815; -96.708
