The Herald-Examiner was originally founded in 1903 by William Randolph Hearst as the Los Angeles Examiner to be a union-friendly answer to the Los Angeles Times. It was the top daily newspaper on the West Coast and far exceeded the Times in circulation. At its peak in 1960, the Examiner had a circulation 381,037. It attracted the top newspapermen and women of the day. The Examiner flourished in the 1940s under the leadership of City Editor James H. Richardson, who led his reporters to emphasize crime and Hollywood scandal coverage.
The Herald-Examiner was the result of a merger with the Los Angeles Herald-Express in 1962. And the Herald-Express was the result of a merger between the Los Angeles Evening Express and Evening Herald in 1931. The Herald-Express was also Hearst-owned and excelled in tabloid journalism under City Editor Agness Underwood, a veteran crime reporter for the Los Angeles Record before moving to the Herald-Express first as a reporter and later its city editor.
The Examiner, while founded as a pro-labor newspaper, moved to the far right over the decades. It was pro-law enforcement and was vehemently anti-Japanese during World War II. Its editorials openly praised the mass deportation of Mexicans, including U.S. citizens, in the early 1930s, and was hostile to liberal movements and labor strikes during the Depression. Its coverage of the Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles during World War II also was particularly harsh on the Mexican-American community.
Much of its conservative rhetoric was minimized when Richardson retired in 1957. Underwood remained on staff following the merger in an upper management position, leaving the day-to-day operations to younger editors.
The Hearst Corporation decided to make the new Herald-Examiner an afternoon paper, leaving the morning field to the Los Angeles Times. But readers’ tastes and demographics were changing. Afternoon newspaper readership was declining. Following the merger between the Herald-Express and Examiner, readership of the morning Los Angeles Times soared to 757,000 weekday readers and more than 1 million on Sunday. The Herald-Examiner’s circulation dropped from a high of 730,000 in mid-1960s to 350,000 in 1977. By the time the Herald-Examiner folded in 1989 its circulation was 238,000.
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