New York World Journal Tribune

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New York World Journal Tribune
New York, New York, United States

The New York World Journal Tribune (WJT, and hence the nickname The Widget) was an evening daily newspaper published in

merging the city's three mid-market papers (the Journal-American, the World-Telegram and Sun and the Herald Tribune
) together into a consolidated newspaper.

Background

The late 1940s and the 1950s were a troubled time for newspapers throughout

1962–1963
and 1965.

Merger

In April 1966, in an attempt to avoid closing down, the Scripps-Howard owned New York World-Telegram and Sun merged with Hearst's New York Journal-American and the New York Herald Tribune to become the New York World Journal Tribune, an evening broadsheet newspaper which would rely on newsstand sales to survive.[1]

The management of the merged paper told their employees that to succeed the new enterprise would need concessions from the unions, but the unions, upset that several thousand workers were planned to be laid-off, demanded their own concessions from management.[1] The result of the impasse was a 140-day strike[2] which delayed the debut of the new paper until September 12, 1966.[3]

Closing

The World Journal Tribune never became economically viable, and it ceased publication eight months later, on May 5, 1967.[4] During its short life, the paper never opened a Washington bureau, and did not have any foreign correspondents on its staff,[2] relying instead on the Los Angeles Times–Washington Post News Service for foreign coverage.[1]

The folding of the WJT left The New York Times, the New York Daily News, and the New York Post as the only daily English-language general circulation newspapers in New York City for many years, when in 1900 there had been fifteen.[5][6]

One survivor of the demise of the World Journal Tribune was New York magazine, which began as the Sunday supplement for the Herald Tribune and continued after the merger as the supplement for the WJT. After the newspaper folded, the editor of New York, Clay Felker, bought the rights to the title with partners and brought it out as a glossy magazine.[7]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c "New Show, Old Cast" Time magazine (22 April 1966)
  2. ^
    New York Times
    (19 January 1997)
  3. ^ Associated Press (13 September 1966). New Paper is Born in New York, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
  4. ^ Associated Press (6 May 1967). World Journal Trib Conceived In High Hopes; Lost Anyway, The Daytona Beach News-Journal
  5. ^ The end of World Journal Tribune represented the end also of all the predecessor newspapers that had previously been absorbed by the three papers that merged, including the
  6. . Retrieved 2021-07-14.

External links