Check It Out

Our Daily Paper

Posted by J.B. on Jan. 14, 2010

       The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee’s own daily morning newspaper, is the largest newspaper in Wisconsin.  It was first printed on Sunday, April 2, 1995 after the consolidation of the local afternoon paper, the Milwaukee Journal and the morning paper, the Milwaukee Sentinel.  However, the roots of the paper go back to 1837.

Solomon Juneau, a fur trader, and later successful business man and first mayor of Milwaukee, began publishing the Sentinel as a weekly publication in 1837.  It became a daily in the mid 1840s.  After Juneau’s death, the paper’s ownership passed through several hands before the Hearst Corporation bought it in 1924.  Hearst operated the Sentinel until 1962 when, after a long and financially devastating strike, it was purchased by the Journal Company.

The Milwaukee Journal started its run in 1882.  Its first editor was Lucius Nieman.  Under Nieman and his successor, Harry Grant, the Journal won a number of awards and Pulitzer Prizes.  The Journal took a more serious approach to news reporting than the other local papers and developed a reputation for its liberal stance during the 1950s when it came out strongly against Senator Joseph McCarthy and the “red scare”.

The Wauwatosa Library has just acquired a subscription to NewsBank’s electronic edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel which provides full-text coverage of the newspaper from January 22, 1990 to date.  With a library card issued by Wauwatosa Library, you can access this resource in the library or from your remote computer.  Search by topic or browse newspaper issues by date. The Library also has microfilm archives of the paper from 1979-2008 and will, of course, continue to subscribe to the good old daily newspaper if you want to come in, settle into a comfortable chair and just read the paper.