ABSTRACT
For more than sixty years the most widely circulated newspaper in Indiana-with a circulation that peaked at close to a quarter million copies-and twice a Pulitzer Prize winner, the Indianapolis Star began publishing June 6, 1903, as a twelve-page morning paper under the leadership of Muncie, Indiana, industrialist George McCulloch, who had made his fortune in the interurban rail business. That rst issue, edited in a building that had once housed the Indianapolis Sun, included eighteen stories and greetings from President Theodore Roosevelt, whose train had stopped in Indianapolis the night before the rst issue appeared. Within four years the Star had eliminated two long-standing city morning newspapers, the Indiana Journal and the Indiana State Sentinel. By 1911, Chicago Post publisher John Shaffer, a friend of Presidents William Howard Taft and Warren G. Harding, had taken over as both editor and publisher, serving in those functions until he died in 1943. During his leadership, the “Businessman’s Paper” led campaigns for social and economic reforms. Roy W. Howard was the paper’s rst sports editor. The writer Janet Flanner became the paper’s rst movie reviewer in 1916. Another woman, Anna Nicholas, was an editorial writer for the paper’s rst twenty- ve years. Other veterans of the staff included Elmer Davis and Raymond Gram Swing.
