July 27, 2005 front page
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Type | Daily newspaper (morning) |
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Format | Broadsheet |
Owner(s) | GateHouse Media |
Publisher | Ken Mauser |
Founded | December 17, 1855 1954 (merger of Journal-Transcript and Star) |
(Peoria Daily Transcript)
Language | English |
Headquarters | 1 News Plaza Peoria, Illinois 61643 United States |
Circulation | 63,024 weekdays 64,078 Saturdays 72,607 Sundays in 2012 |
OCLC number | 8807680 |
Website | pjstar.com |
The Journal Star is the major daily newspaper for Peoria, Illinois, and surrounding area. First owned locally, then employee-owned, it became a Copley-owned entity in 1996. In 2007, the paper was sold to Fairport, New York-based GateHouse Media.
The oldest ancestor of the Journal Star, the Peoria Daily Transcript, was founded by N.C. Nason and first published on December 17, 1855. It has a daily circulation of approximately 65,000 copies and a Sunday circulation of 90,350 copies. The Peoria Journal founded as an afternoon paper by Eugene F. Baldwin, the owner of the El Paso Journal and a former editor of the Daily Transcript, and J. B. Barnes, and first publisher on December 3, 1877. Henry Means Pindell started the Peoria Herald in 1889; and soon bought out the Daily Transcript, forming the Herald-Transcript. Baldwin, who had since left the Journal, started the Peoria Star, with Charles M. Powell on November 7, 1897. Pindell bought the Journal in 1900, sold the Herald-Transcript in 1902, and, after that newspaper had become the Transcript, bought it back in 1916 and merged it with the Journal, creating the Peoria Journal-Transcript, with the Transcript in the morning and the Journal in the afternoon.
In 1944, the Journal and Transcript and their rival Star combined presses as Peoria Newspapers Inc. with the Star as a morning paper and the Journal-Transcript as an afternoon paper, but retained their competition in journalism until 1954, when a full merger was agreed to. Once the agreement was reached, both the morning and afternoon papers immediately changed their names to the Journal Star. To hold the merged newspaper, the current newspaper headquarters were built near War Memorial Drive (U.S. Route 150) and the McClugage Bridge; the first edition from the new presses was on November 14, 1955.
During a newspaper strike in 1958, members of the Newspaper Guild printed a temporary paper, The Peoria Citizen.
The Peoria Journal Star has owned and operated various television and radio outlets in Peoria, Bloomington,Lafayette, Indiana, and Indianapolis, Indiana.