Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph

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Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph
OCLC number
2266192

The Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph was an evening daily newspaper published in

Hearst newspaper chain, it competed with The Pittsburgh Press and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
until being purchased and absorbed by the latter paper.

Predecessors

The Sun-Telegraph's history can be traced back through its 19th- and early 20th-century forebears: the Chronicle, Telegraph, Chronicle Telegraph, and Sun.

Chronicle

The Morning Chronicle was established on June 26, 1841 by Richard George Berford. At first a semi-weekly paper, it became a daily on September 8 of the same year. The original editor was 19-year-old J. Heron Foster, who would later be the founding editor of the Spirit of the Age and the Pittsburgh Dispatch.[1]

A weekly edition of the paper first appeared in November 1841 with the title The Iron City and Pittsburgh Weekly Chronicle.[2][3]

On August 30, 1851, the daily paper started issuing later in the day, becoming the Evening Chronicle.[4]

Historian Leland D. Baldwin described the Chronicle's existence as "undistinguished for several decades".[5]

Chronicle Telegraph

On January 2, 1884, the Pittsburgh Evening Chronicle merged with the Pittsburgh Telegraph (founded in 1873 as the Pittsburgh Evening Telegraph) to form the Pittsburgh Chronicle Telegraph.[4]

In 1892, the Chronicle Telegraph Building on Fifth Avenue gained brief notoriety as the site where anarchist Alexander Berkman attempted to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick.[6]

In October 1900 the paper sponsored the

Brooklyn Superbas over the Pittsburgh Pirates. Held only once, the contest was a precursor to the current World Series
.

Iron and steel manufacturer

Commercial Gazette.[7] The papers were soon housed under the same roof and frequently exchanged or shared staff members.[8] In 1915, a new eight-story building on the current site of the U.S. Steel Tower opened as home to the Chronicle Telegraph along with Oliver's merged and retitled morning paper, the Gazette Times.[9]

Upon the death of George T. Oliver in 1919, control of the Chronicle Telegraph and Gazette Times passed to his sons George S. and Augustus K. Oliver.[10]

Sun

The Pittsburgh Sun was an evening paper first issued on March 1, 1906 by the publisher of the morning

Pittsburgh Post.[11][12]

Pittsburgh newspaper consolidation timeline

Formation

On August 1, 1927,

Paul Block, who at the same time became owner of Pittsburgh's other morning-evening combination: the Post and Sun. An immediately ensuing trade between the two buyers gave Hearst both evening dailies, which he merged to form the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, while Block created the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from the two morning papers. The first issues of the new publications rolled off the presses the next day. The deal stipulated that the Sun-Telegraph, but not the Post-Gazette, would publish on Sundays, even though the latter paper's predecessors had Sunday editions and the former's did not. The combined Sunday circulation that the Post-Gazette would have inherited was instead transferred to the Sunday Sun-Telegraph.[13][14]

The Sun-Telegraph was patterned after Hearst's other twenty-five newspapers in its use of screaming headlines, large type, sensational reporting, unconventional picture layouts, splashes of color, and front-page box scores.[15][16]

Decline

In the 1950s the "Sun-Telly" was losing subscribers and advertisers to its direct competitor in the evening and Sunday fields, the

Pittsburgh Press, and to a lesser degree the Post-Gazette. The Post-Gazette's co-publisher William Block Sr. later recalled that "The Press, which had a great deal of newer equipment, was in a position to give later news, better distribution, and was killing [the Sun-Telegraph] on Sunday."[17]

Sale and aftermath

In 1960 the Hearst organization sold its floundering Pittsburgh operation to the Post-Gazette, which in absorbing its rival gained a Sunday edition. The deal turned out badly for the purchaser: The Sunday edition proved unprofitable; the Sun-Telegraph building, which served as the new Post-Gazette headquarters, was uncomfortable and inefficient; and many former Sun-Telegraph subscribers, preferring to remain evening readers, switched to the Pittsburgh Press.

joint operating agreement with the stronger Press in the following year.[20]

The Post-Gazette bore the subtitle "Sun-Telegraph" from 1960 through 1977, though by late 1962 the subtitle's font size had gradually shrunk to almost unnoticeable proportions.[21]

Notes

  1. ^ Henrici, Max (15 September 1941). "One Hundred Years in a Roaring Cavalcade of News". Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph (Centennial ed.). Anniversary section, pp. 1–2, 4.
  2. ^ "About The Iron City and Pittsburgh weekly chronicle". Chronicling America. Library of Congress. Retrieved May 19, 2015.
  3. ^ "Kept Busy: One Paper Not Enough for Berford". Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph. No. Centennial Edition. 15 September 1941. Anniversary section, p. 3.
  4. ^ a b "Chronology of the Sun-Telegraph". Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph. No. Centennial Edition. 15 September 1941. Anniversary section, p. 1.
  5. ISBN 0-8229-5216-5
    .
  6. ISBN 978-0-7011-6799-8
    .
  7. ^ Andrews 1936, pp. 243–244.
  8. ^ Andrews 1936, p. 250.
  9. ^ Andrews 1936, p. 245–246.
  10. ^ Thomas 2005, p. 145.
  11. ^ Andrews 1936, p. 294.
  12. ^ "About The Pittsburgh Sun". Chronicling America. Library of Congress. Retrieved August 12, 2017.
  13. ^ Thomas 2005, pp. 154–155.
  14. ^ "Papers Merge After Hearst Enters Field". The Pittsburgh Press. August 2, 1927. pp. 1–2.
  15. ^ Thomas 2005, p. 158.
  16. ISBN 978-0-7618-1888-5
    .
  17. ^ Thomas 2005, pp. 227–228.
  18. ^ Thomas 2005, pp. 228, 230.
  19. ^ The Failing Newspaper Act: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1967. p. 2491.
  20. ^ Thomas 2005, p. 230.
  21. ^ "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette". Google News Archive. Retrieved May 19, 2015.

References

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