The Herald (Sharon)

Last updated
The Herald
We cover your world.
Sharon, Pennsylvania - The Herald Logo.png
Type Daily newspaper
Format Broadsheet
Owner(s) Community Newspaper Holdings Inc.
Founder(s)R.C Frey and James Frey
PublisherSharon A. Sorg
EditorEric S. Poole
General managerKelly S. Cummings
Managing editor, designJohn M. Zavinski
Sports editorDan Hiner
FoundedApril 14, 1864
Headquarters52 South Dock Street, Sharon, Pennsylvania 16146 United States
Circulation 15,715 daily(as of 2013) [1]
Website sharonherald.com

The Herald is a six-day morning daily newspaper published in Sharon, Pennsylvania, covering Mercer County and the greater Shenango Valley area of Pennsylvania. It is owned by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., Montgomery, Ala.

Contents

History

The Sharon Herald, a weekly newspaper, began publication April 14, 1864, founded by R.C. and James Frey. It was converted to a daily newspaper nearly 45 years later, April 12, 1909. [2]

The newspaper's office at the foot of Pitt Street in Sharon was washed into the Shenango River during a flood in March 1913. The newspaper missed only four issues and resumed publication with temporary production first in Farrell and then for about a month at the printing plant of the New Castle News before a new office and pressroom were set up on Chestnut Street in Sharon in the Willsonia Building.

The Herald merged with its main competitor, the Sharon News-Telegraph, May 13, 1935. The News-Telegraph incorporated the old Farrell News (founded 1925) and Sharon Telegraph (a daily since 1893). The new newspaper kept The Sharon Herald as its name but production moved to the News-Telegraph building two blocks away on South Dock Street.

The newspaper diversified during the mid-20th century, founding and owning Sharon radio station WPIC from 1938 to 1959; purchasing four eastern Mercer County weeklies in 1965, eventually merging them into the now-twice-weekly Allied News in Grove City; and founding a weekly newspaper, Hubbard Press, in Hubbard, Ohio in 1997. Hubbard Press ceased publication in 2012.

On Feb. 23, 1970, The Herald dropped "Sharon" from its nameplate to reflect its countywide audience. The next year, it was bought by Ottaway Newspapers, Inc., a division of Dow Jones & Company. Outside ownership brought the first Sunday edition, on September 9, 1990, and the launch of sharonherald.com in May 1996, making it one of the first Ottaway papers to be online. The Herald's Digital Edition (http://pdf.sharonherald.com), a subscription-only facsimile of the print edition available as Adobe Acrobat PDF pages, debuted in November 2001 as one of the first of its kind in the country. [2] Both the website and digital edition were developed by in-house talent.

In 1981, printing was moved from an aging Scott letterpress (which was bought used from Dayton, Ohio, in 1969) at the main office at 52 South Dock Street to the new Dow Jones & Company offset printing plant six miles away in Shenango Township that was built to print regional editions of the parent company's The Wall Street Journal. Page negatives photographed of pasted-up pages – and later, paginated pages sent directly to an imagesetter that produced page negatives – were driven to the plant for platemaking.

CNHI, the current owners, bought The Herald effective March 29, 2002. In the fall of 2002, The Herald switched to morning publication; it had published as a daily in the afternoon since 1909. [3] It was not the first time the newspaper was printed in New Castle nor as a morning publication. Ironically, The Sharon Herald had been published both as a morning daily and at the New Castle News' printing plant as a professional courtesy (and transported to Sharon by train) for about a month after the flood of 1913 until The Herald re-established a pressroom in downtown Sharon and an afternoon publication cycle.

Production

The Herald is printed at the CNHI-owned West Penn Printing plant near New Castle in neighboring Lawrence County, Pennsylvania. The Herald also publishes a weekly newspaper, Allied News, covering outlying areas of eastern and southeastern Mercer County. [4]

A 14-unit, single-wide DGM press configured with two full-color towers [5] at West Penn Printing, built in five months on a brownfield on Sampson Street outside New Castle and placed in operation in early 2003, replaced an aging Goss Metro offset press that had been installed in 1968 at the News' downtown headquarters. Printing of The Herald, Allied News and Hubbard Press had been transferred to the downtown New Castle press in August 2002 from the TKS press line at the Wall Street Journal printing plant in West Middlesex, Pennsylvania, owned by The Herald's former parent company, Dow Jones & Company Inc. It had been printed there since the spring of 1981 when that plant opened.

Controversy

In April 2016 the media watchdog group, iMediaEthics.org, published How Not to Report on Suicide: Sharon Herald Story Crossed the Line. [6]

The article begins, "Readers were shocked after daily Pennsylvania newspaper The Sharon Herald published an insensitive and gratuitous story that horrifically detailed a local man’s death by suicide."

Numerous community members registered their outrage at The Herald''s lack of ethics on the paper's Facebook page.

Criticisms of The Herald's coverage include disregard (or ignorance of) accepted journalistic standards for covering suicide; emotional harm to the deceased's family, friends, and the community at large; sensationally detailing the deceased's unrelated, years' old brush with the law; lack of context for or understanding of mental health issues; encouraging copycat behavior in susceptible individuals by including specific, lurid details of the death; and not providing appropriate suicide prevention information with the story.

Related Research Articles

Local Media Group, Inc., formerly Dow Jones Local Media Group and Ottaway Newspapers Inc., owned newspapers, websites and niche publications in California, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania. It was headquartered in Campbell Hall, New York, and its flagship was the Times Herald-Record, serving Middletown and other suburbs of New York City.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel is a daily newspaper published in Santa Cruz, California, covering Santa Cruz County, California, and owned by Media News Group.

<i>Times Herald-Record</i> Daily newspaper published in Middletown, NY, USA

The Times Herald-Record, often referred to as The Record or Middletown Record in its coverage area, is a daily newspaper published in Middletown, New York, covering the northwest suburbs of New York City. It covers Orange, Sullivan and Ulster counties in New York; Pike County in Pennsylvania; and Sussex County in New Jersey. It was published in a tabloid format until March 1, 2022, when it began being published like most other newspapers, in a broadsheet format. The newspaper's news-gathering operations are largely decentralized, the result of its large geographic reach. Its news staff reports from three bureaus:

The Pocono Record is a daily newspaper published in print and online in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, United States.

<i>The Standard-Times</i> (New Bedford) Newspaper in New Bedford, Massachusetts

The Standard-Times, based in New Bedford, Massachusetts, is the largest of three daily newspapers covering the South Coast of Massachusetts, along with The Herald News of Fall River and Taunton Daily Gazette of Taunton, Massachusetts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CNHI</span>

CNHI, LLC is an American publisher of newspapers and advertising-related publications throughout the United States. The company was formed in 1997 by Ralph Martin, and is based in Montgomery, Alabama. The company is financed by, and is a subsidiary of, the Retirement Systems of Alabama.

The Pharos-Tribune is a Monday through Saturday morning newspaper based in Logansport, Indiana, covering Cass County, Indiana. The newspaper and its commercial printing facility in Logansport's Industrial Park are owned by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc.

<i>The Eagle-Tribune</i> Daily newspaper in Massachusetts and New Hampshire

The Eagle-Tribune is a seven-day morning daily newspaper covering the Merrimack Valley and Essex County, Massachusetts, and southern New Hampshire. It is the largest-circulation daily newspaper owned by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., and the lead property in a regional chain of four dailies and several weekly newspapers in Essex County and southern New Hampshire.

<i>The News-Times</i>

The News-Times is a daily newspaper based in Danbury, Connecticut, United States. It is owned and operated by the Hearst Corporation.

The Bluefield Daily Telegraph is a newspaper based in Bluefield, West Virginia, and also covering surrounding communities in McDowell, Mercer and Monroe counties, West Virginia; and Bland, Buchanan, Giles and Tazewell counties, Virginia. It publishes online Monday through Saturday. A print edition is distributed Tuesday through Saturday.

The Free Press is an American, English language daily newspaper published in Mankato, Minnesota.

The Portsmouth Herald is a six-day daily newspaper serving greater Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Its coverage area also includes the municipalities of Greenland, New Castle, Newington and Rye, New Hampshire; and Eliot, Kittery, Kittery Point and South Berwick, Maine.

The Press-Republican is a daily newspaper published five days a week, Tuesday through Friday with a Saturday weekend edition in Plattsburgh, New York, United States. It is owned by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., a subsidiary of the Retirement Systems of Alabama.

<i>The Daily Item</i> (Sunbury)

The Daily Item is a daily newspaper in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, covering the Central Susquehanna Valley Region. It is owned by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc.

The Daily Independent is a morning newspaper covering the city of Ashland and surrounding areas of Boyd County, Kentucky. Previously published daily, the print schedule was reduced to five days a week in April 2020. It is owned by CNHI. It does not publish on Christmas day.

The Kenosha News is a daily newspaper published in Kenosha, Wisconsin, United States. The morning paper serves southeastern Wisconsin and northeastern Illinois. It was the original and flagship property of United Communications Corporation.

The Gloucester Daily Times is an American daily newspaper published Monday through Saturday mornings in Gloucester, Massachusetts by Eagle-Tribune Publishing Company, a subsidiary of Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. The price is $0.75.

<i>The Salem News</i>

The Salem News is an American daily newspaper serving southern Essex County, Massachusetts. Although the paper is named for the city of Salem, its offices are now in nearby Danvers, Massachusetts. The newspaper is published Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings by Eagle-Tribune Publishing Company, a subsidiary of CNHI.

The Salamanca Press is a newspaper serving Cattaraugus County, New York. Based in the city of Salamanca, the paper is owned by Bradford Publishing, which also publishes the Bradford Era and the Olean Times Herald. The newspaper focuses on the municipalities of Salamanca, Ellicottville, Cattaraugus, Little Valley and Randolph. Its coverage also extends into neighboring areas, such as East Otto, West Valley, and Conewango, among others. The paper is the official newspaper of the City of Salamanca and the Salamanca City Central School District.

References

  1. Total Paid Print + Paid Electronic Copies, Actual number of copies of single issue nearest to filing date, U.S.Postal Service Statement of ownership, management and circulation published in The Herald Oct. 1, 2013, page A-7
  2. 1 2 "History of The Herald". The Herald. Retrieved 2018-10-01.
  3. The Herald: About Us, accessed February 3, 2007.
  4. The Herald: Info/Services, accessed February 3, 2007.
  5. "West Penn Printing Equipment".
  6. "How Not to Report on Suicide: Sharon Herald Story Crossed the Line - iMediaEthics". 22 April 2016.