The Courier-Journal history

The courier-journal. [volume] : (Louisville [Ky.]) 1869-current Alternative Titles:

Now one of them, an ailing George Prentice, who would die in 1870, recruited Watterson, who was only 28, to edit the paper.

16, 1881 called also minature ed.; issue for Mar.

Sunday and holiday issues published jointly with: Louisville times (Louisville, Ky. : 1885), as: Courier-journal & times, Feb.

The news reporting under Watterson was weak by modern standards, though coverage of a devastating tornado in 1890 included a list of the damage to every home and building in Louisville.

By the time it celebrated its 25th birthday in 1893, the Courier Journal's editorial page was as widely quoted as any in the country, and Watterson was known as a political kingmaker, Creason wrote.

But when he opposed Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan in 1896, infuriated readers and advertisers bailed on the paper, Creason wrote.

The Twice-a-week courier-journal. [volume] (Louisville, Ky.) 1897-19??

It made its comeback in part through a special newspaper train called "The Owl" launched in 1904 to carry the Courier Journal every day to towns across Kentucky in time for readers to enjoy at breakfast.

After his first wife, Eleanor, was killed by a speeding commuter train in 1913 (some said she may have thrown herself in front of it), he wed Mary Lily Flagler, the widow of Standard Oil and railroad magnate Henry Flagler, and reportedly the richest woman in America.

12, 1918 called also George Rogers Clark Centennial ed.; issue for Mar.

2, 1919 called also Marse-Henry ed.; issue for Jan.

In 1924, when he was under mounting pressure from Democrats to run for governor, he refused, saying he thought it was improper for a newspaper owner to aspire to elected office.

Periodic flooding of the Ohio necessitated extensive protection work; a destructive flood in 1937 caused widespread damage.

1, 1942 called also Sesqui-centennial of the state ed.

The company's reputation for public service ironically rose up to bite it in 1949 when it tried to sell the family-held WHAS Radio, Creason wrote.

In 1952, a group of several hundred newspaper publishers ranked it fourth among the nation’s top 10 papers, trailing only the New York Times, the St Louis Post Dispatch and the Christian Science Monitor.

Board of Education decision in 1954 that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, the papers began crusading for peaceful enforcement of the law.

By 1955, with state funding and a donation by the Kentucky Press Association, the School and the Library established a newspaper microfilming operation to comprehensively collect Kentucky newspapers and to microfilm them on an annual basis.

The courier-journal. [volume] (Louisville, Ky.) 1957-current

Although the Louisville papers hired their first black reporter in 1961, black people continued to be banned from wedding photos and society columns in the women’s section.

Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1777-1963 or use the United States Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

And the papers insisted on calling Muhammad Ali by his given name, Cassius Clay, for six years after he adopted his Muslim moniker in 1964.

On July 12, 1966, driving to the beach on Nantucket Island with his wife, Joan, and daughter Clara, he had placed an 8-foot surfboard across the width of the car, sticking out the windows on both sides.

“A newspaper cannot hope to please all readers,” Barry Bingham Sr., then-editor and publisher, wrote in 1968 on the newspaper’s 100th anniversary. “What it must do is to strive tirelessly to merit the respect of fair-minded people.

Five years later, in 1971, when his father retired, Barry Jr. assumed the titles of editor and publisher.

When an angry mob protesting the Courier Journal's support of school busing broke $3,000 worth of windows at the newspaper building in 1975, advisers to then-Editor and Publisher Barry Bingham Jr. suggested he seek a court order blocking demonstrations near Sixth and Broadway.

The Courier-journal. [volume] (Louisville, Ky.) 1979-current

In 1981, the UK Libraries became one of the first five institutions to receive National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funding to participate in the United States Newspaper Program.

But by the next year, according to "The Patriarch," Gannett established a 25 percent after-tax profit goal for the newspapers, compared with 12.6 percent in 1984, according to figures released at the time by Henry Ansbacher Inc., an investment banker.

The newspaper was purchased by the Gannett Co., Inc., in 1986.

The combined staff, which had 337 news employees before the merger, was trimmed to about 240 a year later after duplicative positions were eliminated. It closed the Louisville Times in 1987, which Barry Jr. had already merged with the morning paper.

UK Libraries conducted the Kentucky Newspaper Project (KNP) from that time to 1991.

Still, the Courier Journal expanded its reach when it took its first steps online in 1997, and later added photo galleries, videos and livestream coverage of news events and editorial board interviews with political candidates to its website, courierjournal.com.

In 1999, the Courier Journal and two of its reporters won the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting and a George Polk Award for “Dust, Deception and Death,” a series that revealed widespread cheating on coal-dust tests in Kentucky and other states.

Address as of July 9, 2000: http://www.courier-journal.com.

In 2002, Gannett poured $85 million into a new production plant and press that allowed more use of color and had twice the printing speed. (The plant now prints the Lexington Herald-Leader, Evansville Courier Press and the Midwest edition of the New York Times, as well as the Courier Journal.)

And in 2003, another pair of reporters won a Polk Award for “Justice Delayed, Justice Denied,” a series on how litigants and others suffered because of chronic delay in the courts in Bullitt County.

Since 2005 KY-NDNP has lead the charge, first with the Congregational Library in Boston, Massachusettes for the conservation, preservation, and digitization of the only known issues of the Afro-American Mission Herald.

In an interview for his obituary, Barry Bingham Jr., who died in 2006, said he was saddened by the dismantling of the paper's bureaus and its shrinking news pages. “The Courier Journal is not what it used to be,” he said, "but on the other hand, journalism in America is not what it used to be.”

John Sparks' Kentucky's Most Hated Man: Charles Chilton Moore and The Bluegrass Blade (Wind Publications, 2009) highlights the unusual journey of the newspaper and the man.

In 2011, at the end of our third two-year grant cycle, over 300,000 pages from 59 Kentucky newspapers were available in Chronicling America and the Kentucky Digital Library.

Ivory, who retired in 2013, was followed by Neil Budde, a Western Kentucky University alumnus who had previously been a reporter and editor at the Courier Journal, then helped launch the Wall Street Journal online.

They chronicled the rise of gay rights, starting with the hard-won Louisville Fairness Ordinance, which protects rights in employment and housing, and the historic 2015 Supreme Court ruling arising in part from a Kentucky case — the aptly titled Love v.