INDIANAPOLIS STAR

The first edition of The Indianapolis News hit the street on Dec. 7, 1869, at a price of two cents a copy. Former Indianapolis Sentinel reporter John Holliday founded The News. It published Monday through Saturday. Under Holliday, The News was politically neutral and committed to the community. It exposed graft by Indiana Supreme Court judges in 1876. It pushed for the creation of the first city charter and a Chamber of Commerce. The News fought an attempt by Standard Oil Co. to distribute ... natural gas in Indianapolis. In 1909, a libel suit was filed against The News by the federal government when the newspaper questioned Theodore Roosevelt’s work on the Panama Canal deal. Editors of The News were indicted but refused to be tried in Washington, saying the trial should be held in Indianapolis where the alleged libel took place. The judge ruled in favor of The News, and the ruling still stands as a landmark victory for the freedom of the press. Holliday ran the paper until ill health forced him to sell to a group of investors led by William H. Smith of Chicago and Charles Warren Fairbanks. Fairbanks was a former secretary of state and served as vice president during Theodore Roosevelt’s second term. Smith served as publisher until his death in 1896. His son Delavan Smith was publisher from 1896 until 1921. Fairbanks' sons Warren, Frederick and Richard would serve as publishers successively from 1921-44. Under Warren Fairbanks, The News won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for an 18-month campaign to cut waste in city and county government. The News would become Indiana’s largest newspaper and would be known as "The Great Hoosier Daily." In 1948, Eugene C. Pulliam purchased The News from the Fairbanks family and remained its publisher until his death in 1975. When The Indianapolis Times folded in 1965, The News became the city’s only evening newspaper. Eugene S. Pulliam became publisher in 1975 after his father died and served until his own death in 1999. Dale Duncan was named his successor. The trend of declining circulation and the demise of afternoon newspapers across the country had finally hit The News. In 1995, the newsroom staffs of The Star and The News merged, but the editorial staffs and pages remained separate. On Oct. 1, 1999, The Indianapolis News published its last newspaper. The Indianapolis Star celebrated its 100th anniversary on June 6, 2003. The brainchild of Muncie industrialist George F. McCulloch, The Star challenged the two existing morning newspapers in the city, the Journal and the Sentinel. McCulloch paid a balloonist $650 to drop red stars on the city in the days leading up to the launch on June 6, 1903. Others were dropped from the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which had been dedicated the previous May. A year and two days after The Star began, it absorbed the Journal, and in 1906 it purchased the Indianapolis Sunday Sentinel.More