Type | Daily newspaper |
---|---|
Format | Broadsheet |
Owner(s) | Gannett Company |
Publisher | Karen Ferguson |
Editor | Jeff Taylor |
Founded | 1903 |
Headquarters | 130 South Meridian Street Indianapolis, Indiana 46225 United States |
Circulation | 137,129 Daily (2014) 265,112 Sunday (2014) |
ISSN | 1930-2533 |
Website | www |
The Indianapolis Star is a morning daily newspaper that began publishing on June 6, 1903 in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. It has been the only major daily paper in the city since 1999, when the Indianapolis News ceased publication. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting twice, in 1975 and 1991. It is currently owned by the Gannett Company.
The Indianapolis Star was founded on June 6, 1903, by Muncie industrialist George F. McCulloch as competition to two other Indianapolis dailies, the Indianapolis Journal and the Indianapolis Sentinel. It acquired the Journal a year and two days later, and bought the Sentinel in 1906. Daniel G. Reid purchased the Star in 1904 and hired John Shaffer as publisher, later replacing him. In the ensuing court proceedings, Saffer emerged as the majority owner of the paper in 1911 and served as publisher and editor until his death in 1943.
Central Newspapers, Inc. and its owner, Eugene C. Pulliam—maternal grandfather of future Vice President Dan Quayle—purchased the Star from Shaffer's estate on April 25, 1944 and adopted initiatives to increase the paper's circulation. In 1944, the Star had trailed the evening Indianapolis News but by 1948 had become Indiana's largest newspaper.
In 1948, Pulliam purchased the News and combined the business, mechanical, advertising, and circulation operations of the two papers, with the News moving into the Star's building in 1950. The editorial and news operations remained separate. Eugene S. Pulliam took over as publisher upon the death of his father in 1975, a role he retained until his own death in 1999.
In September 1995, the newsroom staffs of the Star and the News merged. In 1999, the News ceased publication, leaving the Star as the only major daily paper in Indianapolis. Soon thereafter the trustees of Central Newspapers, Inc., the owner of the Star and other newspapers in Indiana and Arizona, began investigating the sale of the small chain to a larger entity. In 2000, the Gannett Company acquired the paper, leaving Indianapolis with no locally owned daily newspaper other than the Indianapolis Recorder, a weekly mainly circulated in the African-American community.