The Herald(Sharon)
| We cover your world. | |
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner(s) | Community Newspaper HoldingsInc. |
| Founder(s) | R.C Frey and James Frey |
| Publisher | Sharon A. Sorg |
| Editor | Eric S. Poole |
| General manager | Kelly S. Cummings |
| Managing editor, design | John M. Zavinski |
| Sports editor | Dan Hiner |
| Founded | April 14, 1864 |
| Headquarters | 52 South Dock Street,Sharon, Pennsylvania16146 United States |
| Circulation | 15,715 daily (as of 2013)[1] |
| Website | sharonherald |
The Heraldis a six-day morningdaily newspaperpublished inSharon, Pennsylvania,coveringMercer Countyand the greaterShenango Valleyarea ofPennsylvania.It is owned byCommunity Newspaper HoldingsInc., Montgomery, Ala.
History
[edit]The Sharon Herald,aweekly newspaper,began publication April 14, 1864, founded by R.C. and James Frey. It was converted to a daily newspaper nearly 45 years later, April 12, 1909.[2]
The newspaper's office at the foot of Pitt Street in Sharon was washed into the Shenango River during aflood in March 1913.The newspaper missed only four issues and resumed publication with temporary production first in Farrell and then for about a month at the printing plant of the New Castle News before a new office and pressroom were set up on Chestnut Street in Sharon in the Willsonia Building.
The Heraldmerged with its main competitor, theSharon News-Telegraph,May 13, 1935. TheNews-Telegraphincorporated the oldFarrell News(founded 1925) andSharon Telegraph(a daily since 1893). The new newspaper keptThe Sharon Heraldas its name but production moved to theNews-Telegraphbuilding two blocks away on South Dock Street.
The newspaper diversified during the mid-20th century, becoming part owner of Sharon radio stationWPICfrom 1938 to 1959; purchasing four eastern Mercer County weeklies in 1965, eventually merging them into the now-twice-weeklyAllied Newsin Grove City; and founding a weekly newspaper, Hubbard Press, inHubbard, Ohioin 1997. Hubbard Press ceased publication in 2012.
On Feb. 23, 1970,The Heralddropped "Sharon" from its nameplate to reflect its countywide audience. The next year, it was bought byOttaway Newspapers, Inc.,a division ofDow Jones & Company.Outside ownership brought the first Sunday edition, on September 9, 1990, and the launch ofsharonheraldin May 1996, making it one of the first Ottaway papers to be online. The Herald's Digital Edition (http://pdf.sharonherald), a subscription-only facsimile of the print edition available as Adobe Acrobat PDF pages, debuted in November 2001 as one of the first of its kind in the country.[2]Both the website and digital edition were developed by in-house talent.
In 1981, printing was moved from an aging Scott letterpress (which was bought used from Dayton, Ohio, in 1969) at the main office at 52 South Dock Street to the new Dow Jones & Company offset printing plant six miles away in Shenango Township that was built to print regional editions of the parent company'sThe Wall Street Journal.Page negatives photographed of pasted-up pages – and later, paginated pages sent directly to an imagesetter that produced page negatives – were driven to the plant for platemaking.
CNHI,the current owners, boughtThe Heraldeffective March 29, 2002. In the fall of 2002,The Heraldswitched to morning publication; it had published as a daily in the afternoon since 1909.[3]It was not the first time the newspaper was printed in New Castle nor as a morning publication. Ironically, The Sharon Herald had been published both as a morning daily and at the New Castle News' printing plant as a professional courtesy (and transported to Sharon by train) for about a month after the flood of 1913 until The Herald re-established a pressroom in downtown Sharon and an afternoon publication cycle.
Production
[edit]The Herald is printed at the CNHI-ownedWest Penn Printingplant near New Castle in neighboringLawrence County, Pennsylvania.The Herald also publishes a weekly newspaper,Allied News,covering outlying areas of eastern and southeastern Mercer County.[4]
A 14-unit, single-wide DGM press configured with two full-color towers[5]at West Penn Printing, built in five months on a brownfield on Sampson Street outside New Castle and placed in operation in early 2003, replaced an aging Goss Metro offset press that had been installed in 1968 at the News' downtown headquarters. Printing of The Herald, Allied News and Hubbard Press had been transferred to the downtown New Castle press in August 2002 from the TKS press line at the Wall Street Journal printing plant in West Middlesex, Pennsylvania, owned by The Herald's former parent company, Dow Jones & Company Inc. It had been printed there since the spring of 1981 when that plant opened.
Controversy
[edit]In April 2016 the media watchdog group, iMediaEthics.org, publishedHow Not to Report on Suicide: Sharon Herald Story Crossed the Line.[6]
The article begins, "Readers were shocked after daily Pennsylvania newspaper The Sharon Herald published an insensitive and gratuitous story that horrifically detailed a local man’s death by suicide."
Numerous community members registered their outrage atThe Herald''s lack of ethics on the paper's Facebook page.
Criticisms ofThe Herald'scoverage include disregard (or ignorance of) accepted journalistic standards for covering suicide; emotional harm to the deceased's family, friends, and the community at large; sensationally detailing the deceased's unrelated, years' old brush with the law; lack of context for or understanding of mental health issues; encouraging copycat behavior in susceptible individuals by including specific, lurid details of the death; and not providing appropriate suicide prevention information with the story.
References
[edit]- ^Total Paid Print + Paid Electronic Copies, Actual number of copies of single issue nearest to filing date, U.S.Postal Service Statement of ownership, management and circulation published in The Herald Oct. 1, 2013, page A-7
- ^ab"History of The Herald".The Herald.Retrieved2018-10-01.
- ^The Herald: About Us,accessed February 3, 2007.
- ^The Herald: Info/Services,accessed February 3, 2007.
- ^"West Penn Printing Equipment".
- ^"How Not to Report on Suicide: Sharon Herald Story Crossed the Line - iMediaEthics".22 April 2016.