Ithaca Journal
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The Ithaca Journal is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper published in Ithaca, New York. It is locally edited and printed in downtown Ithaca Monday through Saturday.
Founded in 1815 as the Seneca Republican, the it was renamed the Ithaca Journal in 1823. According to the its website (see links below), the first daily edition of paper was published in 1870 and its offices are housed in the same building it has occupied since 1905.
The Journal was purchased by Frank E. Gannett in 1912, thereby becoming the second local newspaper of what would later become the media conglomerate Gannett Co, Inc. It merged with the Daily News in 1919 and adopted the name Ithaca Journal-News, although the masthead reads Ithaca Journal.
The Journal was awarded a Pulitzer Prize special citation in 1964 for meritorious public service
In May 1996, the Journal switched to a morning printing and distribution schedule after many years as an afternoon daily. Until that point, the newspaper run by Cornell University students, the Cornell Daily Sun had been the only morning daily paper in the city.
Criticism
Reflecting Ithaca's left-liberal political climate, the Journal has been frequently criticized throughout its history as pro-war and pro-corporate. Critics have pointed out that the newspaper strongly supported the Vietnam War, headlining an editorial in 1967 "U.S. Troops Must Stay in Vietnam," and condemned protests of the first Persian Gulf War as "unrealistic" in 1991. Prior to World War II, the Journal, as with many American newspapers of the era, praised Europe's dictators. "No objective critic can fail to see that, viewed by the practical standard, [Fascism] has been, on the whole, a success," pronounced a misguided 1932 editorial. In 2004, the Journal censored a column by Elizabeth Bauchner critical of President George W. Bush.
Nevertheless, the paper is not immune to critism from the right; in recent years, particular attention has been paid to left-leaning Metro section editor John Carberry. The Journal has also consistently endorsed Democratic Party candidates for federal offices in recent years.
The newspaper has also been criticized for being generally of low quality, earning it the nickname (at least among Cornell Daily Sun staffers), "The Ithaca Urinal."
External links
- Official Journal link (http://www.ithacajournal.com/)
- Gannett Co. (http://gannett.com/)
- The Cornell Daily Sun (http://www.cornellsun.com/)