Journal Star history

The Peoria Journal founded as an afternoon paper by Eugene F. Baldwin, the owner of the El Paso Journal and a former editor of the Daily Transcript, and J. B. Barnes, and first publisher on December 3, 1877.

It was short-lived, however, and Emery, broken-hearted, died in 1882.

Henry Means Pindell started the Peoria Herald in 1889; and soon bought out the Daily Transcript, forming the Herald-Transcript.

A stock company was formed in 1894 between Baldwin, Barnes, M.N. Snyder, and Charles H. Powell.

In 1900, Barnes sold the Journal to Henry M. Pindell of the Herald-Transcript.

Copley was a family-owned group launched from Aurora, Ill., in the 1920s.

But by 1921, it had moved into its new building at 111-113 SW Madison, just a block from the Journal Transcript’s new Jefferson Street address.

When Henry Pindell died in 1924, his widow, Eliza Smith Pindell, became president, and his son-in-law, Carl Slane, became treasurer and directed the paper.

So an agency corporation, Peoria Newspapers Inc., was formed in 1944.

By 1954, a merger of all departments seemed in order.

During a newspaper strike in 1958, members of the Newspaper Guild printed a temporary paper, The Peoria Citizen.

A freeform concept – in which an ad is surrounded by news – was introduced in 1968 and caught on with hundreds of publications.

Carl Slane, former Journal-Transcript treasurer, president and publisher, and finally chairman of the board of PJS, passed away in 1979.

On March 26, 1984, an employee trust, established by the board of directors, purchased the first 22.6 percent of the Journal Star company stock.

However, the success for the employees had the opposite effect for the company itself, as it had to buy back stock of large numbers of early retirees. It company also bought the Galesburg Register-Mail of Galesburg, Illinois, in 1989.

That changed in 1995 when Lee bought out the Seacrests, closed the evening newspaper and introduced an expanded Lincoln Journal Star.

With the benefit of a new press and new production facility, the newspaper was redesigned in July 2000 and expanded again.

October 2001 – Copley sells the Fox Valley group of daily newspapers in suburban Chicago – Joliet, Aurora, Elgin and Waukegan – leaving just its downstate dailies in Peoria, Galesburg, Springfield and Lincoln.

August 2004 – Helen Copley, chairman emeritus of The Copley Press Inc., dies at age 81.