New York World Journal Tribune - Definition and Overview

The New York World Journal Tribune was a newspaper that grew out of an attempt to save several historic New York City newspapers by a merger in 1967. It was a financial failure, however, and lasted for only a short period before shutting down entirely.

The late 1940s and the 1950s were a troubled time for newspapers throughout North America. Newspapers had acquired a new competitor for the eyes and ears of the nation, television. Competition from radio and magazines for the news audience also continued unabated. The market for evening papers in particular was affected by television and by the suburban lifestyle, but all papers were affected by it. The New York media market was by far the nation's largest at the time (by an even larger margin than it is currently) and had by far the most daily newspapers. Mergers had been ongoing for several years. In the 1960s the market got even more competitive, forcing the closure of the Hearst Corporation-owned New York Mirror in 1963.

The New York World Telegram and the Sun merged with the Journal-American and the New York Herald Tribune to become the short-lived New York World-Journal-Tribune, nicknamed The Widget due to its long and unwieldy name. The newspaper industry was struggling with financial troubles by the mid-1960s and had warned their unions that they could not survive a strike; in 1966 the unions struck anyway, for over 100 days. The World Journal Tribune was a last-ditch attempt to resurrect the two papers, plus the New York Journal-American, as one merged entity, an evening paper, but it was essentially stillborn, with only a few numbers produced before it became apparent that the enterprise was not going to be economically viable. It ceased to exist on May 5, 1967.

This left the New York Times, the New York Daily News, and the New York Post as the only New York City daily newspapers for many years; of the three, only the first was a broadsheet with a reputation for quality journalism, the other two being tabloids which often lived up to their reputation for sensationalism.