Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The front page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner	Journal Communications
Publisher	Elizabeth Brenner
Editor	Martin Kaiser
Founded	1837 (Sentinel) 1882 (Journal) 1995 (Journal Sentinel)
Headquarters	333 West State Street Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53203 United States
Circulation	217,755 Daily 384,539 Sunday
Sister newspapers	CNI Newspapers MKE Weekend Extra
ISSN	1082-8850
Official website	jsonline.com

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is a daily morning broadsheet printed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. It is the primary newspaper in Milwaukee, the largest newspaper in Wisconsin and is distributed widely throughout the state. It is the namesake of its owner, Journal Communications, which is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

History

The Journal Sentinel was first printed on Sunday, April 2, 1995, the result of the consolidation of operations between the afternoon Milwaukee Journal and the morning Milwaukee Sentinel, which had been owned by the same company, Journal Communications, for more than thirty years. The new Journal Sentinel then became a seven-day morning paper.

In early 2003, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel began printing operations at its new printing facility in West Milwaukee. In September 2006, the Journal Sentinel announced it had "signed a five-year agreement to print the national edition of USA Today for distribution in the northern and western suburbs of Chicago and the eastern half of Wisconsin."

The legacies of both papers are acknowledged on the editorial pages today, with the names of the Sentinel's Solomon Juneau and the Journal's Lucius Nieman and Harry J. Grant listed below their respective newspaper's flags. The merged paper's volume and edition numbers follow those of the Journal.

Milwaukee Sentinel

Founding

The Milwaukee Sentinel was founded in response to disparaging statements made about the eastside of town by Byron Kilbourn’s westside partisan newspaper, the Milwaukee Advertiser, during the city’s “bridge wars.” The founder of Milwaukee Solomon Juneau provided the starting funds for editor John O’Rourke, a former office assistant at the Advertiser, to start the paper. It was first published as a four-page weekly on June 27, 1837. A deathly ill O’Rourke struggled for the paper to find its feet, but he died six months later of tuberculosis at the age of 24.

Becoming a Whig newspaper

On Juneau’s request, O’Rourke’s associate Harrison Reed remained to take over the Sentinel’s operations. He continued the struggle to keep the paper ahead of its debts, often printing pleas to his advertisers and subscribers to pay their bills any way they could. Meanwhile, the establishment of the Whig party in the territory thrust the Sentinel into the hurly-burly of partisan politics. In 1840 Reed was assaulted by what the Sentinel charged were hirelings of Democratic Governor Henry Dodge. Later that year the paper abandoned its independence and proclaimed itself a Whig paper with its winning endorsement of William Henry Harrison for president in 1840.

In financial straits, Reed lost control of the paper in 1841 when Democrats foreclosed on the Sentinel’s mortgaged debt and took over its editorial page. Only after the Democrats’ successful election of Dodge for Congress was Reed able to regain control of the paper. The next year he sold the Sentinel to Elisha Starr, a feisty editor who had founded a new Whig paper in response to the Sentinel’s Democratic lapse. Reed later became governor of Florida.

Starr guarded the Sentinel’s position as the sole Whig organ in Milwaukee. Heavily in debt, he secured the partnership of David M. Keeler, who paid off the paper’s creditors. Keeler took on partner John S. Fillmore (nephew of U.S. president Millard Fillmore) and succeeded in ousting Starr, who kept publishing his own version of the Sentinel. Keeler and Fillmore trumped his efforts by turning their Sentinel into a daily on December 9, 1844, while still publishing a weekly edition. The paper finally began to prosper and establish itself as a major political force in the nascent state of Wisconsin. Having accomplished his goal of establishing the first daily paper in the territory, Keeler retired two months later, but not before opening a public reading room of the nation’s newspapers, the origin of Milwaukee’s public library system. Fillmore employed a succession of editors, including Jason Downer, later a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, and Increase A. Lapham, a Midwestern naturalist who later helped establish the National Weather Service.

The King years

In June 1845 Milwaukee was visited by Albany Evening Journal editor General Rufus King (grandson of U.S. Constitution signer Rufus King). Hosted by Fillmore, he was impressed with the growing town, and relocated there three months later, becoming the Sentinel’s editor. King was lionized by the community. It was his suggestion that made the Sentinel the first paper in the northwest to employ newsboys to boost street sales.

The quality of the Sentinel greatly improved due to King’s connections to the East. King invested his own money in the paper, purchasing the first power press in the midwest. Two years later the first telegraph message wired to Wisconsin was received in the Sentinel office.

The paper provided thorough coverage of Wisconsin’s constitutional convention, held in Madison in 1846. When the adopted constitution fell short of Whig expectations, the Sentinel was instrumental in encouraging its rejection by territorial voters on April 6, 1847. The Sentinel launched a German paper, Der Volksfreund, to bring the city’s large population of German immigrants to the Whig cause. Gen. King himself was a delegate to Wisconsin’s second constitutional convention. He was also appointed head of the Milwaukee militia, as well as being the city’s first superintendent of public schools. In the wake of the Panic of 1857 King sold the paper to T.D. Jermain and H.H. Brightman, but remained editor, covering the state legislative sessions of 1859-1861 himself.

The Civil War years

The Sentinel took a stand against slavery during its extended coverage of runaway slave Joshua Glover’s liberation from a Racine jail on March 11, 1854. After the birth of the Republican party in Ripon, Wisconsin nine days later, the Sentinel heartily endorsed the new party, and remained a Republican paper from then on. Circulation rose with the looming Civil War, and the paper expanded to a nine column sheet with the start of 1861. In 1862 the Sentinel bought the fading abolitionist newspaper The Free Democrat and published it for two months before folding and sending its subscribers the Weekly Sentinel.

Soon after his inauguration Abraham Lincoln appointed Rufus King minister to the Papal States. As he prepared to sail to Europe the Civil War broke out. He took a leave of absence and was appointed a brigadier general. Later he helped form and lead the Union Army's famous Iron Brigade.

The Sentinel prospered during the Civil War, sometimes printing five editions of the paper a day if the events warranted. Much of the war news was cribbed from Chicago papers, but the Sentinel did dispatch a war correspondent for over half a year. After the war ended circulation fell off and the number of editions were kept to a minimum.

Becoming a Republican organ

In 1870 sole proprietor Horace Brightman sold the Sentinel to the Milwaukee Publishing Company, run by A.M. Thomson and other former owners of the Janesville Gazette. With Thomson also serving as editor, he twice changed the paper’s page size and diminished the paper’s local focus in favor of telegraphed national news. He also began publishing a Sunday edition. In 1874 Thomson was voted out by the other owners, and a succession of short-serving editors finished out the decade.

Disappointed in the paper’s weak defense of unregulated corporations, a group of stalwart Republicans purchased the old Democratic Milwaukee News in 1880 and resurrected it as the Republican and News. Horace Rublee, former chairman of the state Republican party, was hired as editor-in-chief. Failing to put the Sentinel out of business, the Republicans bought the paper outright and issued it as the Republican-Sentinel. The next year the word Republican was dropped, but the paper remained a major force in the state’s Republican party. This troubled managing editor Lucius W. Nieman, who had covered the state capitol for the Sentinel and had seen the control the powerful monied interests had over state government. When a Democrat was elected to Congress from a die-hard Republican county, the Sentinel’s editor refused to print the fact. This led Nieman to resign and join the fledgling Milwaukee Journal. The Journal first received acclaim when Nieman’s coverage of a deadly hotel fire revealed it to be a firetrap, but the Sentinel defended the hotel’s management, which included a Sentinel stockholder. The Milwaukee Journal became the paper’s primary competition for the next eleven decades.

In 1892-1893 the Sentinel moved temporarily from its home on Mason Street so the old building could be torn down and a new, state-of-the-art structure could be erected in its place.

The Pfister years

By the 1890s the Sentinel had long established itself as the chief Republican organ in the state. Nevertheless, tannery magnate, utility owner, hoteliere and state Republican party boss Charles F. Pfister brought a libel suit against the paper after it had printed an unflattering view of him. Before coming to trial, Pfister instead purchased the Sentinel outright in February 1901. Pfister was one of the leaders of the state’s stalwart Republican machine, having made governors and senators. He had long been a moneyman and tactician for the party, and with his purchase of the Sentinel he used it to fight the progressive reforms of newly elected Gov. Robert M. La Follette, Sr. by casting him as a socialist radical bent on dictatorship. During La Follete’s successful re-election campaign in 1902 Pfister’s political power was diminished after it had been revealed that he had secretly purchased the editorial pages of some 300 of the state’s newspapers. In 1905 Pfister was indicted in a rendering company bribery scandal but was acquitted for lack of testimony. The Sentinel continued to denounce La Follette for over twenty years, whether it be for his reforms or his stand against U. S. participation in World War I.

The Hearst years

The paper was sold to the Hearst Corporation in 1924. Operations of the Sentinel were joined to Hearst's afternoon paper, the Wisconsin News; a joint Sunday edition was published as the Sunday Telegram. The Wisconsin News entered into a lease arrangement with the School of Engineering for radio station WSOE on November 15, 1927. The lease was for a minimum of three years. To reflect the new arrangement, the Wisconsin News changed the call letters of WSOE to WISN on January 23, 1928. The station was sold to the Wisconsin News in November 1930. The News closed in 1939. In 1955 Hearst purchased television station WTVW, and changed the call letters to WISN-TV.

Hearst operated the Sentinel until 1962, when, following a long and costly strike, it abruptly announced the closing of the paper. Although Hearst claimed that the paper had lost money for years, The Journal Company, concerned about the loss of an important voice (and facing questions about its own dominance of the Milwaukee media market), agreed to buy the Sentinel name, subscription lists, and any "good will" associated with the name. The News-Sentinel building at Plankinton and Michigan was torn down; the presses were shipped to Hearst's San Francisco papers, and Sentinel operations moved to Journal Square, with Hearst retaining WISN radio and television (WISN-TV remains part of Hearst's successor company Hearst-Argyle, while WISN Radio is owned by Clear Channel). The Sentinel was a morning broadsheet, published Sunday through Saturday; following the sale to The Journal Company it became a Monday-through-Saturday paper.

Milwaukee Journal

The Journal was started in 1882, in competition with four other English-language, four German- and two Polish-language dailies. Its first editor was Lucius Nieman, who wanted to steer the paper away from the political biases and yellow journalism common at the time. Nieman was an innovative and crusading editor, and under his watch the paper won numerous awards, including the five Pulitzer Prizes.

The Journal followed the Sentinel into broadcasting. The Journal purchased radio station WKAF in 1927, changing its call letters to WTMJ. It later launched an FM station, W9XAO, in 1940; it was later called W55M, WMFM, WTMJ-FM, WKTI-FM and, presently, WLWK-FM. WTMJ-TV, Milwaukee's first television station, went on the air in 1947. All three stations remain Journal-owned today.

Nieman's successor, Harry J. Grant, introduced an employee stock-purchase plan in 1937, and as a result 98% of Journal stock was held by its employees. A small bloc of Journal stock was given to Harvard College, and funded the Nieman Fellowship program for promising journalists.

Competing with two raucous Hearst papers filled with gossip, features and comic strips, Harry Grant took a more sober approach to news presentation, emphasizing local news. During his years as editor and publisher, the Journal received several Pulitzers and other awards from its peers; it was under Grant that the Journal gained a reputation as a leading voice of moderate midwestern liberalism. During the 1950s, the Journal was outspoken in its opposition to Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and his search for communist influence in government, which perhaps inflated the Journal's reputation for liberalism.

At its circulation peak in the early 1960s, the Journal sold about 400,000 copies daily and 600,000 on Sunday. The Journal was a Monday-through-Saturday afternoon broadsheet, containing its distinctive Green Sheet, also publishing Sunday mornings. Though circulation had declined from its peak, it still held a rare position for an afternoon paper, dominating its market up until 1995, when the Journal and Sentinel were consolidated.

Awards

The Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel have received the Pulitzer Prize eight times:

In 1919, The Milwaukee Journal won the award for public service because of its stand against Germany in World War I.

In 1934, cartoonist Ross A. Lewis won for his cartoon on labor-industry violence.

In 1953, business desk reporter Austin C. Wehrwein won for international reporting with the series of stories "Canada's New Century."

In 1966, the series "Pollution: The Spreading Menace" garnered the award for public service.

In 1977, Margo Huston became the first female staff member of The Milwaukee Journal to win a Pulitzer Prize. She won the award in the category of best general reporting for a series of articles on the elderly and the process of aging.

In 2008, local government reporter David Umhoefer was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting for his investigation of the Milwaukee County pension system.

In 2010, reporter Raquel Rutledge was awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting for her investigations and stories on abuses in a state-run child care system.

In 2011, Mark Johnson, Kathleen Gallagher, Gary Porter, Lou Saldivar, and Alison Sherwood were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for their "lucid examination of an epic effort to use genetic technology to save a 4-year-old boy imperiled by a mysterious disease, told with words, graphics, videos and other images.".

External links

• JS Online, the Journal Sentinel website
• JS background page
• TIME magazine article: The Fair Lady of Milwaukee