Barry Bingham, Jr.

George Barry Bingham Jr. (September 23, 1933 – April 3, 2006 in Louisville, Kentucky) was an American newspaper publisher and television and radio executive. He was the third and last generation of the Bingham family that controlled Louisville's daily newspapers, a television station, and two radio stations for much of the 20th century.

Bingham was educated at the Brooks School and Harvard University.

"Barry Jr.," as he was almost always called, was the surviving son of Barry Bingham Sr. and the grandson of Robert Worth Bingham, who originally purchased controlling interest in The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times in 1919. The original plan by Bingham Sr. was for Barry Jr. to control the family's broadcast properties, WHAS-AM-FM-TV, as well as the Standard Gravure rotogravure print plant. Robert Worth Bingham III (known as Worth), the brother of Barry Jr., was slated to run the newspapers, but Worth was killed in a freak driving accident at the age of 34 that broke his neck and killed him instantly in 1966 which changed the elder Bingham's plans, and Barry Jr. took over management of the newspapers in 1971. (His younger brother, Jonathan Worth Bingham, was electrocuted in an accident on the family estate in 1964 at the age of 22.)

Bingham Jr. was a different breed of newspaper publisher. Besides his distinctive mustache and fondness for Scottish Tam o' Shanters, Bingham Jr. was a stickler for journalistic ethics—sometimes to a fault, critics claimed—and public service that sometimes trumped profits. He insisted on professionalism at all levels, even to the point of insisting on the removal of his own wife, mother, and two sisters from the company board of directors. This ongoing struggle, particularly with sister Sallie Bingham, eventually led Bingham Sr., who remained chairman, to sell off the family media empire in 1986, with the newspapers being sold to Gannett Company, the radio stations to Clear Channel Communications, and WHAS-TV to The Providence Journal.

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