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Omaha World-Herald

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Omaha World-Herald
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatBroadsheet
Owner(s)Berkshire Hathaway
PublisherTerry Kroeger
Founded1885
Headquarters1314 Douglas Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68102
 United States
Circulation125,470 Daily
157,375 Sunday[1]
ISSN0276-4962
Websiteomaha.com

The Omaha World-Herald is the primary daily newspaper of Nebraska and portions of southwest Iowa. It is based in Omaha, Nebraska. For decades it circulated daily throughout Nebraska and in parts of Kansas, South Dakota, Missouri, Colorado, and Wyoming. In 2008, distribution was reduced to the eastern third of Nebraska and western Iowa.[2]

The World-Herald was the largest employee-owned newspaper in the United States.[3] On November 30, 2011, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway announced plans to buy the newspaper.

The Omaha World Herald Building in Downtown Omaha

The World-Herald had for many years been the newspaper with the highest penetration rate – the percentage of people who subscribe to the publication within the paper's home circulation area – in the United States.[2]

The Omaha World-Herald Company also operates the website Omaha.com, the region's most popular website by all measures of traffic. The site has more than 300,000 registered users and more than 14 million page views monthly.[4] Its website and newspaper combined reach 85.3 percent of the Omaha market, the second-highest percentage of people within a home circulation area compared with other major metropolitan newspapers in the United States.[4]

Freedom Center

The company dubs its downtown Omaha production center the John Gottschalk Freedom Center. The Freedom Center also houses its three printing presses, which can each print 75,000 papers per hour, and are considered to be some of the most advanced in the world.[5] In 2006, the company purchased the 16-story former Northwestern Bell/Qwest Communications building in downtown Omaha as a new base for its news, editorial, circulation and business operations.

The newspaper has bureaus in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Washington, D.C. Throughout the region, The World-Herald also owns smaller daily and weekly newspapers, which contribute to its World-Herald News Service.

Through the World Publishing Co., the former name of the newspaper's parent company, The World-Herald owned Omaha television station KETV from its founding in 1957. (The station was dubbed "Omaha World-Herald" television.) Because of a change in Federal Communications Commission law, The World-Herald had to divest the station in 1976. It sold the station to the now-defunct Pulitzer Broadcasting Co., of St. Louis, which merged with the Hearst Corporation in 1998 and is the station's current owner.

Pulitzer Prizes

The World-Herald has won three Pulitzer Prizes, including the esteemed Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, awarded in 1943.[6]

  • 1920 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing: Harvey E. Newbranch for an editorial entitled "Law and the Jungle," which decried the lynching of a black man on the lawn of the Douglas County Courthouse. Newbranch was the first editorial writer to win a Pulitzer under his own name—as opposed to awards for unsigned staff editorials—in opinion writing.[7]
  • 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service: For its initiative and originality in planning a statewide campaign for the collection of scrap metal for the war effort. The Nebraska plan was adopted on a national scale by the daily newspapers, resulting in a united effort which succeeded in supplying American war industries with necessary scrap material.
  • 1944 Pulitzer Prize for Photography: Earle L. Bunker for his photo entitled "Homecoming".

History

The newspaper was founded in 1885 by Gilbert M. Hitchcock as the Omaha Evening World. It purchased George L. Miller's Omaha Herald in 1889. The paper was established as an independent political voice but quickly moved to the Democratic Party column. William Jennings Bryan was its editor in 1894–1896. Hitchcock served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and, starting in 1911, two Senate terms. It was a more objective voice than the Omaha Bee, which tended to sensationalize news to drum up sales.

His son-in-law, Henry Doorly, took control of the paper after Hitchcock's death in 1934. The editorial page began leaning Republican after Hitchcock's death. Over his lifetime, Doorly served 58 years at the paper.

In 1963, the World Publishing Company, owned solely by heirs of the Hitchcock/Doorly families, sold the World-Herald to local businessman Peter Kiewit, a construction magnate whose namesake company is a member of the Fortune 500. When he died, Kiewit left provisions to ensure that the paper would remain locally owned, with a large part of the plan securing employee ownership.

On November 30, 2011, the Omaha World-Herald announced that Berkshire Hathaway would buy the newspaper for $150 million pending a vote by its shareholders, including active employees, retired employees and the Peter Kiewit Foundation. Also included in the sale were the World-Herald subsidiary newspapers in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Kearney, Nebraska, Grand Island, Nebraska, York, Nebraska, North Platte, Nebraska and Scottsbluff, Nebraska. [8]

Notable staff

See also

References

  1. ^ "2014 Top 100 Daily Newspapers in the U.S. by Circulation" (PDF). BurrellesLuce. 2014-03-14. Retrieved 2014-03-27. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  2. ^ a b [1] Archived August 9, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ "Staying the Course | American Journalism Review". Ajr.org. Retrieved 2010-08-28.
  4. ^ a b [2] Archived September 10, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ McMeekin, T. "Integration key to smooth operations at Omaha World-Herald," Newspapers and Technology. Retrieved 7/24/08.
  6. ^ "The Pulitzer Prizes | Search: omaha". Pulitzer.org. Retrieved 2010-08-28.
  7. ^ "Omaha Press Club Honors 'Hall Of Famers' - Omaha News Story - KETV Omaha". Ketv.com. 2008-05-29. Retrieved 2010-08-28.
  8. ^ Omaha World-Herald (2011-11-30). "Buffett to buy The World-Herald". omaha.com. Retrieved 2011-11-30.
  9. ^ Bloomfield, Susanne George. "Biography of Elia Wilkinson Peattie 1862–1935". Elia Peattie: An Uncommon Writer An Uncommon Woman. University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
  10. ^ "James Keogh; Time Editor, Nixon Staffer". The Washington Post. May 14, 2006. Retrieved October 6, 2012.
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