St. Louis Sun

Last updated

The St. Louis Sun was a daily newspaper based in St. Louis, published by Ingersoll Publications. The Sun began publishing on September 25, 1989, but was never as competitive as the well-established St. Louis Post-Dispatch . Seven months after it started, the Sun ceased operations on April 25, 1990. [1]

Contents

In 1984 Ingersoll Publications Company purchased the free weekly Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis. In 1985 Ingersoll Publications Company chief executive Ralph Ingersoll II began planning to solidify its entrance into the St. Louis newspaper market. [2] Ingersoll wanted to compete directly with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the failure of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in 1986 gave him the opportunity to do just that. Ingersoll used high-risk junk bonds to raise millions of dollars to finance a number of newspaper acquisitions including the $20 million his company needed to launch the St. Louis Sun as a tabloid-style paper.

In 1988 Ingersoll Publications purchased The Alton Telegraph and Mississippi Valley Offset, where the paper would be printed. [3] Ingersoll Publications Company announced its Post-Dispatch competitor in March 1989. The tabloid newspaper would be modeled after other papers such as the Rocky Mountain News and Barron's. [2] The Sun began publishing on September 25 with Ingersoll as editor in chief. The paper was the first American metropolitan daily since The Washington Times was published in 1982. [3] For the first three months of 1990, the newspaper claimed sales averaging over 100,000 a day. [4] The Sun earned much local notoriety for a full-tabloid-page headline which read "He Bit Hers, She Sued His", which had to do with a lawsuit by a woman against a man who bit her buttocks. [5] Growth of the Sun's circulation nonetheless fell short of the company's expectations in the critical month of April. The paper's business strategy backfired, cannibalizing ad revenues at its sister publication, the Suburban Journals. [6] Ingersoll announced the newspaper's closure April 25, 1990, the newspaper's last edition. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Pulitzer</span> Hungarian-American newspaper publisher (1847–1911)

Joseph Pulitzer was a Hungarian-American politician and newspaper publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York World. He became a leading national figure in the Democratic Party and was elected congressman from New York.

<i>St. Louis Post-Dispatch</i> Daily newspaper in Missouri, United States

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is a major regional newspaper based in St. Louis, Missouri, serving the St. Louis metropolitan area. It is the largest daily newspaper in the metropolitan area by circulation, surpassing the Belleville News-Democrat, Alton Telegraph, and Edwardsville Intelligencer. The publication has received 19 Pulitzer Prizes.

Sun Media Corporation was the owner of several tabloid and broadsheet newspapers in Canada and the 49 percent owner of the now defunct Sun News Network. It was a subsidiary of Quebecor Media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KDNL-TV</span> ABC-affiliated TV station in St. Louis, Missouri

KDNL-TV is a television station in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, affiliated with ABC. Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station maintains studios at the University Tower in the suburb of Richmond Heights and a transmitter in Shrewsbury.

The Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 was an Act of the United States Congress, signed by President Richard Nixon, authorizing the formation of joint operating agreements among competing newspaper operations within the same media market area. It exempted newspapers from certain provisions of antitrust laws. Its drafters argued that this would allow the survival of multiple daily newspapers in a given urban market where circulation was declining. This exemption stemmed from the observation that the alternative is usually for at least one of the newspapers, generally the one published in the evening, to cease operations altogether.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Society of News Editors</span> Organization

The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) was a membership organization for editors, producers or directors in charge of journalistic organizations or departments, deans or faculty at university journalism schools, and leaders and faculty of media-related foundations and training organizations. In 2019, it merged with the Associated Press Media Editors to become the News Leaders Association.

<i>Telegram & Gazette</i> Newspaper in Worcester, Massachusetts

The Telegram & Gazette is the only daily newspaper of Worcester, Massachusetts. The paper, headquartered at 100 Front Street and known locally as the Telegram or the T & G, offers coverage of all of Worcester County, as well as surrounding areas of the western suburbs of Boston, Western Massachusetts, and several towns in Windham County in northeastern Connecticut.

The St. Louis Globe-Democrat was originally a daily print newspaper based in St. Louis, Missouri, from 1852 until 1986. When the trademark registration on the name expired, it was then used as an unrelated free historically themed paper.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paxton Media Group</span> American newspaper company

Paxton Media Group of Paducah, Kentucky, is a privately held media company with holdings that include newspapers and a TV station, WPSD-TV in Paducah. David M. Paxton is president and CEO.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harriet Bland</span> American sprinter

Harriet Claiborne Bland, later Harriet Bland Green, was an American sprinter from St. Louis, Missouri.

<i>Sun Journal</i> (Lewiston, Maine) Newspaper published in Lewiston, Maine, United States

The Sun Journal is a newspaper published in Lewiston, Maine, United States, which covers central and western Maine. In addition to its main office in Lewiston, the paper maintains satellite news and sales bureaus in the Maine towns of Farmington, Norway and Rumford. Its daily circulation is approximately 18,600, making it one of the most-read dailies in the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erastus Wells</span> American politician

Erastus Wells was a 19th-century politician and businessman from Missouri. Wells was born in Jefferson County, New York, and was the only son of Otis Wells, a descendant of Hugh Welles, an early colonist of Wethersfield, Connecticut. Otis Wells was a farmer and died when Erastus was only fourteen. Erastus was the grandson of Ethelinda Otis and a relation of John Otis, who helped found the town of Hingham, Massachusetts in 1635. Other notable relatives include James Otis, a successful lawyer, Harrison Gray Otis, a statesman and orator, Samuel A. Otis, one of the framers of the constitution of Massachusetts, and George Otis, a clergyman and author.

The Telegraph is an American daily newspaper published seven days a week in Alton, Illinois, serving the St. Louis Metro-East region. It was owned by Civitas Media, based in Davidson, North Carolina, a subsidiary of Philadelphia-based Versa Capital Management, which owned about 100 daily and weekly newspapers across 12 states but sold The Telegraph to Hearst Corp. in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lerner Newspapers</span> Chain of weekly newspapers in Chicago

Lerner Newspapers was a chain of weekly newspapers. Founded by Leo Lerner, the chain was a force in community journalism in Chicago from 1926 to 2005, and called itself "the world's largest newspaper group".

<i>Suburban Journals</i>

Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis was a group of publications in the St. Louis region owned by Lee Enterprises. The chain served St. Louis and St. Charles counties in Missouri and Madison, Monroe and St. Clair counties in Illinois.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Streetcars in St. Louis</span>

Streetcars in St. Louis, Missouri operated as part of the transportation network of St. Louis from the middle of the 19th century through the early 1960s.

Postmedia Network Canada Corp. is a Canadian media conglomerate consisting of the publishing properties of the former Canwest, with primary operations in newspaper publishing, news gathering and Internet operations. It is best known for being the owner of the National Post and the Financial Post. The company is headquartered at Postmedia Place on Bloor Street in Toronto.

Ralph M. Ingersoll was an American newspaper publisher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Schneider (journalist)</span> American journalist

Andrew Jay Schneider was an American journalist and investigative reporter who worked for the Pittsburgh Press and Seattle Post-Intelligencer as a public-health reporter. He received back-to-back Pulitzer Prizes while working for the Press: one in Specialized Reporting in 1986 with Mary Pat Flaherty, and another for Public Service with Matthew Brelis and the Press in 1987. Schneider also co-authored a book about an asbestos contamination incident in Libby, Montana, entitled "An Air That Kills".

The Missouri Republican was a newspaper founded in 1808 and headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Its predecessor was the Morning Gazette. It later changed its name to St. Louis Republic.

References

  1. ↑ Newspaper Association of America
  2. 1 2 Scardino, Albert (29 March 1989). "Ingersoll Paper to Challenge Post-Dispatch in St. Louis". The New York Times. Retrieved 15 October 2018.
  3. 1 2 "With Sun Entry, St. Louis Is 2-Paper Town". The New York Times. 25 September 1989. Retrieved 15 October 2018.
  4. 1 2 Kramer, Staci D. (26 April 1990). "St. Louis Sun Shuts Down After 7 Months". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 October 2018.
  5. ↑ Mark Fitzgerald (June 1, 2004). "Thinking Small" (PDF). Editor & Publisher Magazine. Retrieved August 18, 2020.
  6. ↑ "Ingersoll Cutting Costs At Chain". The New York Times. 14 May 1990. Retrieved 15 October 2018.


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.