The Boston Herald is a tabloid format newspaper, though not a tabloid in the traditional sense, and is the smaller of the two big dailies in
Boston, Massachusetts (the other being The
Boston Globe). It has a history that can be traced back through two lineages, the Daily Advertiser and the old
Boston Herald, and two media moguls, William Randolph Hearst and
Rupert Murdoch.
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 been renamed the 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 two-sided sheet, selling 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 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 Corporation, 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 afternoon
edition was soon dropped and the unwieldy name shortened to Boston Herald American, with the Sunday edition called the
Sunday Herald Advertiser. 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.
Ownership Changes
In February 1994, Murdoch's 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 Enterprise
in south suburban Quincy and Brockton, netted $225 million for Purcell, who vowed to use the funds to clear the
Herald's debt and reinvest in the tabloid.[2]
The Herald is conservative in its editorial stances, in contrast to the competitor Globe's generally liberal
editorial page.
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]
Columnists
- Howie Carr writes extensively on local politics and is a frequent TV commentator.
- 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 and frequent co-host on
WEEI.
- Tony Massarotti is a baseball columnist and
frequent co-host on WEEI.
- Dave Wedge is a political columnist, longtime reporter and frequent TV and radio
commentator.
- Michele McPhee is a metro columnist and crime reporter who is also the author of the
best-selling book "Mob Over Miami."
- Jessica Heslam is an award-winning reporter who covers the media.
- Joe Sciacca is the paper's deputy managing editor. Sciacca is a former political reporter and
columnist who is a regular panelist on "Beat the Press" on the WGBH TV show Greater Boston, which is hosted by Emily Rooney.
- Kevin Convey is the tabloid's new editor-in-chief, taking over in December 2006 for
Ken Chandler, the former editor of the New York
Post, who left the Herald to form his own media consulting firm.
- The newspaper is owned by Pat Purcell, the former publisher of the New York
Post, who bought the Herald from Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch.
- 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. Bryant is now at
the Washington Post, Greene writes for the New York Post and Manly is the managing editor of the Bay State Banner.
- Brett Arends is an Op-Ed columnist. He also writes for TheStreet.com. He is a former
Herald business columnist.
- David Exum covers NASCAR for the Herald and works as an online news editor.
References
- Sterling Quinlan, The Hundred Million Dollar Lunch (Chicago, J.P. O'Hara, 1974), ISBN 0-87955-310-3.
External links
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