In May 1905,
Amon G. Carter accepted a job as an advertising space salesman for the new newspaper The
Fort Worth Star. The
Star printed its first edition on February 1, 1906, with Carter as the advertising manager, and
Louis J. Wortham as its first editor. The Financier and President of the Fort Worth Star was Colonel Paul Waples, head of the Waples Platter Company and instrumental in nearly all of early Fort Worth institutions. The
Star lost money, and was in danger of going bankrupt when Carter, and Wortham went to Waples. He cut a check for the additional funds and purchased his newspaper's main competition, the
Fort Worth Telegram. In November 1908, the
Star purchased the
Telegram for
$100,000, and the two newspapers combined on January 1, 1909, into the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Paul Waples was the President of the Star Telegram publishing company and Chairman of the Board when he was tragically killed in an
Interurban accident at his estate in Arlington Nov 16, 1916. Amon Carter and Louis Wortham were pall bearers for Paul Waples, who left a significant legacy which is notated on a plaque dedicated to his memory at the Star Telegram building in Fort Worth. Carter took the ball and from 1923 until after World War II, the
Star-Telegram was distributed over one of the largest circulation areas of any newspaper in the
South, serving not just Fort Worth, but also
West Texas,
New Mexico, and western
Oklahoma. The newspaper created
WBAP in 1922 and Texas' first television station,
WBAP-TV, in 1948. Capital Cities Communications purchased the newspaper along with WBAP-AM-FM from the Carter family in 1974. Disney, then the owner of Capital Cites, sold the Star-Telegram along with other newspapers to Knight-Ridder in 1997 and McClatchy purchased Knight-Ridder in 2006. In August 2024, the newspaper announced it would reduce its number of weekly print editions to three a week: Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. ==Market==