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One of the New York Journal's most infamous cartoons, depicting Philippine-American War General Jacob H. Smith's order "Kill Everyone over Ten," from the front page on May 5, 1902.

The New York Journal American was a newspaper published from 1937 to 1966. The Journal American was the product of a merger between two New York newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst: The New York American (originally the New York Journal, renamed American in 1901, published by Hearst 1895-1937), a morning paper, and the New York Evening Journal, an afternoon paper, published 1895-1937. The Journal-American was an afternoon publication. It was at this newspaper that the phrase "Bulldog Edition" was coined: in 1905, Hearst urged his editors to write headlines that would "bite the public like a bulldog." Hearst, the privileged and entitled son of a wealthy mining tycoon, was already established in the newspaper business in San Francisco and ventured to New York to expand his empire.

Having purchased the newspaper, Hearst entered into a circulation war with the New York World, the newspaper run by his former mentor Joseph Pulitzer and from whom he stole both George McManus and Richard F. Outcault. In 1913, McManus created his Bringing Up Father comic strip, and Outcault brought his comic strip "The Yellow Kid" to the New York Journal. This was one of the first comic strips to be printed in color and gave rise to the phrase yellow journalism, used to describe the sensationalist and often dishonest articles, which helped, along with a one-cent price tag, to greatly increase circulation of the newspaper. Many believed that as part of this, aside from any nationalistic sentiment, Hearst may have helped to initiate the Spanish-American War of 1898 to increase sales.

Rube Goldberg was a later cartoonist with the Journal-American. Popular columnists were O. O. McIntyre, Dorothy Kilgallen and Jimmy Cannon, one of the highest paid sports columnists in the country. Beginning in 1938, Max Kase (1898-1974) was the sports editor for 28 years, ^[1] and the fashion editor was Robin Chandler Duke. ^[2]

The newspaper had one of the highest circulations in New York in the 1950s but had difficulties attracting advertising. ^[3] Subscribers and newsstand customers had no reason to doubt that the paper had survived admirably the 1951 death of William Randolph Hearst Sr. (Washingtonians, on the other hand, knew all too well that Hearst's death was a major factor in the 1954 merger of Hearst's Washington Times-Herald with the Washington Post.) Although the Journal-American continued to operate out of a decrepit building on Manhattan's Lower East Side using ancient printing presses, its layout remained snazzy. The masthead often was adorned with red ink. The newspaper devoted much space to the Beatles, enlisting Dr. Joyce Brothers to write front-page articles in 1964 that analyzed their fast rise to superstardom. While the Fab Four worked on the production of Help! on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas the following year, the acclaimed syndicated columnist Phyllis Battelle interviewed them for articles that ran exclusively on the Journal-American front page for four consecutive days. ^[4] On one of the four days, editors highlighted a quote from Ringo Starr about the stupidity of fans deciding to smoke and drink in order to imitate his habits and those of his bandmates. (His comment does not appear to have been reprinted in Rolling Stone (magazine) or in any of the expensive coffee-table books on the Beatles.)

The Journal-American's apparent adjustment to changing times (including excellent coverage of increasingly violent communities in Harlem, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Newark, NJ -- whose crimes were often ignored by the New York Times) diverted the attention of millions away from the internal struggles, advertising deficits and budget problems that were killing the paper.

During this period of "decline" in the mid 1960s, many New Yorkers believed the Journal-American still had the best Sunday comics and the best results from horse races at Aqueduct and other New York - area tracks where gambling was popular.

Besides trouble with advertisers, another major factor that led to the paper's demise was a power struggle between a Hearst executive named Richard Berlin and two of William Randolph Hearst's sons, who had trouble carrying on the father's legacy after his 1951 death. The son known as "Bill" Hearst claimed in 1991 that Berlin, who died in 1971, had suffered from Alzheimer's disease starting in the mid 1960s and that this caused him to shut down several Hearst newspapers without just cause. ^[5]

The Journal American ceased publishing in April of 1966, officially the victim of a general decline in the revenue of afternoon newspapers in the face of increasing competition from Walter Cronkite and other television newscasters who went on the air live in the evening.

While participating in a lock-out after the New York Times and New York Daily News had been struck by a union, the Journal-American agreed to merge with its evening rival, the New York World-Telegram and Sun, and the morning New York Herald-Tribune. The combined New York World Journal Tribune did not start until several months after the April 1966 expiration of its three components. Its publisher announced that time was needed to sharpen its layout and contents. Those efforts were in vain. After the World Journal Tribune finally went on sale on September 12, 1966, it folded after eight months.

Other evening newspapers that expired following the rise of network news in the 1960s donated their clipping files and many darkroom prints of published photographs to libraries. The Hearst Corporation, however, decided to donate only the "basic back-copy morgue" of the Journal - American to the University of Texas at Austin. ^[6] Everything else, including office memorandums, letters from celebrities, photographs, clipping files and indexes, was shredded in 1966. ^[7] If a researcher wants to read a particular item or article published by star reporters Bob Considine or Dorothy Kilgallen or by columnists Walter Winchell or Westbrook Pegler, he/she must know which date to find in the microfilmed edition. The newspaper was famous for its many photographs that were credited as "Journal-American Photo," (such as a 1952 enlargement of an elderly white woman being escorted by two police officers out of her building at 225 West 106th Street in Manhattan because she had attemped suicide with pills), but they exist only on microfilm, and no index is available.

Pete Hamill has portrayed the New York Journal American negatively in books about the New York of his youth and on the 1997 acclaimed television documentary David Halberstam's The Fifties broadcast on the A&E Network. Hamill emphasizes the paper's vicious anti-communist stance during the McCarthy Era and its large headlines screaming about the dangers of "red" countries.

• Guide to an Archived Collection of the Journal-American