New York World-Telegram

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The New York World-Telegram was formed by the 1931 sale of the New York World by the heirs of Joseph Pulitzer to Scripps Howard, owners since 1927 of the Evening Telegram. More than 2,000 employees of the morning, evening and Sunday editions of the World lost their jobs in this merger, though some star writers like Heywood Broun and Westbrook Pegler were kept on the new paper. For some years afterward, the World-Telegram enjoyed a reputation as a liberal paper, based on memories of the Pulitzer-owned World. But under Scripps Howard, the paper moved steadily to the right, in time becoming a conservative bastion. In 1950, the World-Telegram acquired the remains of another afternoon paper, the New York Sun, to become the New York World-Telegram and Sun. The writer A.J. Liebling described the "and Sun" portion of the combined publication's masthead as resembling the tail feathers of a canary on the chin of a cat.

Early in 1966, a proposal to create New York's first joint operating agreement led to the merger of the World-Telegram and Sun with Hearst's Journal American, intending to produce a united afternoon edition, with a morning paper to be produced by the Herald Tribune. When strikes prevented the JOA taking effect, the papers united in August, 1966 to become the short-lived New York World Journal Tribune, nicknamed as "The Widget". It lasted only until May 5, 1967.

The closure of the World-Journal-Tribune left New York City with three daily newspapers: The New York Times, the New York Post, and the New York Daily News.

See also: Media of New York City