Wednesday, August 23, 2006

The glory days of 1969

Way back in 1969 the Beacon Journal was 15th In news and 26th In advertising among U.S. newspapers. This was the lead story written by Mickery Porter in the Tower Topics March 1970 issue: .

By MICKEY PORTER
The Beacon Journal has moved from 16th to 15th place among American newspapers in the amount of lines of news run last year, according to Media Records, the chief measuring organization in the industry.

This was the second straight . advance for the BJ, having moved from 28th place in 1967.

A total of 25,610,557 lines of news was presented to Akron area readers, up from 24,498,929 lines in 1968.

That's more news than was provided by any paper in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Houston, St. Louis, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Dallas, New Orleans, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, and on and on.

The 14 papers ahead of us, topped by the Los Angeles Times' 31.5 million lines, are, in order, the LA Times, New York Times, Miami Herald, Washington Post, Denver Post, San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, Cleveland Plain Dealer, San Jose Mercury, Boston Herald Traveler, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Ft. Lauderdale News and Detroit News.

Following us, and rounding out the top 25, are the Newark News, Santa Ana Register, Oakland Tribune, Hartford Courant, San Diego Union, Columbus Dispatch, Seattle Times, Washington Star, Milwaukee Journal and St.Petersburg Times.

Total Advertising lineage also was up, although we slipped from 25th to 26th place.
Last year the BJ ran 48,708,172 lines of advertising as compared to 46,960,192 lines in 1968.However, we were the 12th ranked evening-Sunday combination, with only the Milwaukee Journal, Houston Chronicle, Minneapolis Star, Atlanta Journal, Ft. Lauderdale News, Columbus Dispatch, Dallas TimesHerald, Denver Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Santa Ana Register and Detroit News.

The Knight group placed four of its papers in the top 50 in advertising. The Miami Herald was third, behind the Los Angeles Times and New York Times; the Philadelphia Inquirer was 15th; the BJ 26th, and the Charlotte Observer 46th.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Beacon Journal also regularly won the contest as Knight Newspapers' most accurate newspaper. The proofreaders and copy desk would go over stories to fix even typos. We took pride in putting out an accurate paper, right down to the grammar and spelling.

That's why I cringe today when I see spelling and grammar errors, sometimes in HEADLINES!

It's disheartening to watch the disembowelment of a newspaper that won four Pulitzers during my 26 years with the ol' gal.

Anonymous said...

i'm pretty sure we led the country for many years in inches of grocery ads for the population in our area. don't know who could verify that.maybe some old ad folks.