19th century , reads: "U.S. at War with Germany"
The Washington Star was founded on December 16, 1852, by Captain Joseph Borrows Tate. It was originally headquartered on "Newspaper Row" on
Pennsylvania Avenue in
Washington, D.C. Tate initially named the paper
The Daily Evening Star. In 1853,
Texas surveyor and newspaper entrepreneur
William Douglas Wallach purchased the paper, and in 1854 shortened the name to
The Evening Star and introduced
The Sunday Star edition. The sole owner of the paper for 14 years, Wallach built up its subscriptions with reporting of the
American Civil War, among other things. In 1867, a three-man consortium of
Crosby Stuart Noyes,
Samuel H. Kauffmann and George W. Adams acquired the paper, with each of the investors putting up $33,333.33. The Noyes-Kauffmann-Adams interests would own the paper for the next four generations.
20th century , NW in
Washington, D.C., now part of the
Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site In 1907, subsequent
Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist
Clifford K. Berryman joined the
Star. Berryman was most famous for his 1902 cartoon of President
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, "Drawing the Line in Mississippi," which spurred the creation of the
teddy bear. Meanwhile,
The Washington Post acquired and merged with its morning rival, the
Washington Times-Herald, in 1954 and steadily drew readers and advertisers away from the falling
Star. By the 1960s, the
Post was Washington's leading newspaper. The Star expanded to broadcasting by purchasing two more stations,
WLVA-AM-TV in
Lynchburg in 1965; and
WCIV in
Charleston in 1966. In 1972, the
Star purchased and absorbed one of Washington's few remaining competing newspapers,
The Washington Daily News. For a short period of time after the merger, both
"The Evening Star" and
"The Washington Daily News" mastheads appeared on the front page. The paper soon was retitled
"Washington Star News" and finally,
"The Washington Star" by the late 1970s. In 1973, the
Star was targeted for clandestine purchase by interests close to the
South African
Apartheid government in its
propaganda war, in what became known as the
Muldergate Scandal. The
Star, whose editorial policy had always been conservative, was seen as favorable to South Africa at the time. In 1974, pro-apartheid Michigan newspaper publisher
John P. McGoff attempted to purchase
The Washington Star for $25 million, but he and his family received death threats, and the sale did not go through. Their flagship magazine,
Time, was the arch-rival to
Newsweek, which
The Washington Post Company had owned since 1961. Time Inc.'s president,
James R. Shepley, convinced
Time's board of directors that owning a daily newspaper in the national capital would bring a unique sense of prestige and political access. An effort to draw readers with localized special "zonal" metro news sections, however, did little to help circulation. The
Star lacked the resources to produce the sort of ultra-local coverage zonal editions demanded and ended up running many of the same regional stories in all of its local sections. An economic downturn resulted in monthly losses of over $1 million. Overall, the
Star lost some $85 million following the acquisition before Time's board decided to give up. Writers who worked at the
Star in its last days included
Michael Isikoff,
Howard Kurtz,
Fred Hiatt,
Jane Mayer, Chris Hanson,
Jeremiah O'Leary, Chuck Conconi,
Crispin Sartwell,
Maureen Dowd, novelist Randy Sue Coburn,
Michael DeMond Davis, Lance Gay,
Jules Witcover,
Jack Germond, Judy Bachrach,
Lyle Denniston,
Fred Barnes,
Gloria Borger, Kate Sylvester, and
Mary McGrory. The paper's staff also included editorial cartoonist
Pat Oliphant from 1976 to 1981. == Washington Star Syndicate ==