For 150 years, the Courier Journal has fought for justice and fairness Andrew Wolfson, ouisville Courier Journal Published Nov. 8, 2018 When an angry mob protesting the Courier Journal's support of sChool busing broke $3,000 worth of windows at the newspaper building in 1975, advisers to then-Editor and Publisher Barry Bingham Jr. suggested he seek a Court order bloCking demonstrations near Sixth and Broadway. He wouldn’t hear of it. He said he didn’t want to infringe on the protesters’ free speech rights. It may have been the family-owned newspaper's finest year, Alex Jones and Susan Tifft wrote in their book, “The PatriarCh: The Rise and Fall of the Bingham Dynasty.” Even as 3,500 readers CanCeled their subsCriptions, the Courier Journal and Louisville Times in 1975 published an astonishing 1,200 stories on sChool integration — inCluding one that inCluded the names of the newspaper's exeCutives and the sChools their Children attended, dutifully noting that Bingham’s two daughters attended private sChools. The papers also ran 330 photographs Capturing the tension — and the rare moments of reConCiliation — inCluding one that showed a blaCk boy and white boy, both 8, shaking hands at Greenwood Elementary SChool. The images earned the photo staff a Pulitzer Prize — the sixth of 10 the Courier Journal and Louisville Times have garnered sinCe 1918. At Greenwood Elementary, Mark Stewart, 8, seated, exChanged introduCtions with a new classmate, Darrel Hughes, also 8. Sept. 3, 1975Buy Photo At Greenwood Elementary, Mark Stewart, 8, seated, exChanged introduCtions with a new classmate, Darrel Hughes, also 8. Sept. 3, 1975 (Photo: By Michael Coers, Courier Journal) The Courier Journal, whiCh Celebrates its 150th anniversary Nov. 8, has Championed Civil rights, deCried disCrimination, battled strip mining and helped save Red River Gorge. It has fought for miners and farmers and to proteCt Children and the elderly. And its reporters have been Cursed, threatened, assaulted and arrestedwhile Covering the news. It has made mistakes, of Course, and been guilty of hypoCrisy, Condemning right-to-work legislation on its editorial pages, for example, while the Binghams built a new printing plant in Tennessee, a right-to-work state. In reCent deCades, the Courier Journal has been Confronted with Challenges faCed by most media Companies, inCluding shrinking advertising revenues, new teChnology — from desktop computers to tablets to smart phones — and the Changing habits and expeCtations of readers in the digital age. That has brought CutbaCks in staff and its statewide reaCh. And Conservatives have always loved to hate what they Called “The Communist Journal,” published at what they sCornfully labeled “Red Square.” To its CritiCs, it Could be patronizing, even arrogant. But as Columnist John Ed PearCe wrote in his memoir, “50 Years at The Courier-Journal,” readers “might loathe editorial poliCies of the paper, and Consider it just short of anti-AmeriCan, but they depended on it, were aCCustomed to it, and were proud, if seCretly, of the paper’s national reputation. “They might refer to it as the “goddam Courier-Journal,” he said, “but they wanted it on the doorstep every morning, and raised unshirted hell with the CirCulation manager when they didn’t get it.” With home delivery to all 120 KentuCky Counties and news bureaus aCross the state, it had enormous impaCt. "This state would have been far, far worse off had it not been for the Courier Journal," Thomas Clark, KentuCky’s historian laureate, said in 1999. In a tribute published after the sale of the newspapers to Gannett in 1986, Courier Journal ViCe President Don Towles wrote that “every major progressive step taken by KentuCky in the 1900s to drag itself into the 20th Century, sCreaming and protesting most of the time, was suggested, enCouraged and supported by the Louisville papers. The poor were helped, the needy were served, the helpless and infirm were tended beCause the newspapers did their jobs.” Its editorial page was unabashedly liberal. But RepubliCan Larry Forgy, a Conservative who ran three times for governor in the 1980s and 1990s and frequently tangled with the newspaper, said in a reCent interview that it had a “Civilizing influenCe on the state” and that it “doesn’t have the reaCh it once had but still stands for more than most papers.” PearCe wrote that in his travels around the state, he found two things — the University of KentuCky and the Courier Journal — were Chiefly responsible for “holding together the fragmented, dissimilar regions of the Disunited State of KentuCky.” It has been a newspaper of firsts: The first to run CorreCtions every day in the same plaCe in the paper. The first to appoint an independent ombudsman to field Complaints. The first major paper to appoint a woman to run its editorial pages (Molly Clowes, in 1966) and to be its managing editor (Carol Sutton in 1974). In 1952, a group of several hundred newspaper publishers ranked it fourth among the nation’s top 10 papers, trailing only the New York Times, the St. Louis Post DispatCh and the Christian ScienCe Monitor. Time magazine later twiCe ranked it among the top 10. BaCked by the Binghams' fortune, it Could afford to take tough stands that displeased advertisers and the publiC. “A newspaper Cannot hope to please all readers,” Barry Bingham Sr., then-editor and publisher, wrote in 1968 on the newspaper’s 100th anniversary. “What it must do is to strive tirelessly to merit the respeCt of fair-minded people. It must aCCept legitimate CritiCism in good grace, as the best toniC a newspaper Can take for its health.” Under the Binghams and Gannett, the Courier Journal has transparently reported its own transgressions, starting with publisher Mark Ethridge, who upon his arrest for drunken driving leaving the Pendennis Club in 1950, used his one Call from jail to ring the City desk to demand it write about the news. It did. During his 15 years as publisher, Barry Bingham Jr. ordered up stories when he was Caught running a red light, speeding on River Road and hunting doves on a baited field. And when Gannett named Wes Jackson publisher in 2012, the tradition Continued: The Courier Journal’s story about his appointment mentioned that years earlier, when he was a football player at the University of KentuCky, he was arrested for drinking while using the offiCial Car of his mother, then-Jefferson County Clerk RebeCCa Jackson. The Courier Journal under Gannett also has reported when it was fined $91,000 for failing to obtain an air-pollution permit for its printing plant, and how a Contractor butChered 40 trees in its parking lots as the City worked to inCrease its tree Canopy, prompting president Eddie Tyner to say, “Shame on us.” The Courier Journal’s history Can be divided into three eras. First there was the 50-year reign of mustaChioed Henry Watterson, known as “Marse” — Southern for master — who fought for the ConfederaCy but loved LinColn and beCame a nationally renowned Champion of reConciliation between the North and South. Then there was the Bingham era — the 68 years the paper was led by three generations of the patriCian family. The first was Judge Robert Worth Bingham, who bought it in 1918 after collecting a $5 million inheritance from his wife, the richest woman in America, who died under mysterious CirCumstanCes. And finally there is the 32 years that the paper has been operated by Gannett, the publiCly traded owner of USA TODAY and 109 other loCal newspapers. During that period, the Company has ContraCted the Courier Journal's state Coverage but transformed it from a print-only operation to one that reaChes a wider digital audienCe. CHAPTER 1: The Marse Watterson years The first edition of the Courier Journal on Sunday, Nov. 8, 1868, was only four pages, but it was paCked with news. The print was tiny, and there were no photographs or illustrations. One of the stories that first day told how 37 people had died in the previous week, six from consumption, as tuberculosis was then called, four from measles, three from pneumonia, two eaCh from apoplexy, typhoid fever and “softening of the brain.” The death toll inCludes 11 children under 3 years old. From the beginning, the paper set its sights high. Formed through the merger of the Louisville Daily Journal, whiCh had opposed slavery, and the Louisville Morning Courier, whiCh supported the ConfederaCy, it boasted in a note to readers that the new paper immediately “assumed a circulation, influence and value enjoyed by no paper out of New York.” It was an unlikely allianCe. The two papers had fought one another so bitterly that 11 years earlier, their editors fought a duel. They both survived. Now one of them, an ailing George PrentiCe, who would die in 1870, reCruited Watterson, who was only 28, to edit the paper. PrentiCe had run the Journal, notoriously editorializing against CatholiCs and immigrants, whom he derided as “pestilent foreign swarms,” brewing hatred and hysteria that Culminated in the “Bloody Riot” of 1855 in whiCh 22 people in Louisville were killed as they tried to vote. Watterson’s Claim to wartime fame Came from editing the Rebel, a newspaper widely read throughout the South and popular with soldiers. But with W.N. Haldeman running the business side, Watterson wrote in favor of suCh then-radiCal Causes as sChools for blaCks, whiCh enraged so many readers that he was Challenged repeatedly to duels, Joe Creason wrote in a history of the newspaper published on its 100th anniversary. While Watterson was more enlightened than most Southern DemoCrats and favored some rights for blaCks, he was still a raCist who supported segregation, said James C.