The Springboro Star
Press is a newspaper based
in Springboro,
Ohio
in the United States
. Published by the Miller Publishing Company every
Wednesday, it serves Warren County
and southwest Ohio.
The paper
was founded by the Brown
Publishing Company, which owned The Western Star, the weekly in the
Warren County seat of Lebanon
.
The
Star Press was first published on Tuesday, August 31, 1976 and covered
Springboro, Hunter
, and
Clearcreek
Township. The first editor was Stephanie Shutts, who was
succeeded by Stephanie Irwin, Cathy Nolte, and Jean Kowalski.
In 1979,
the paper expanded coverage to Franklin
and Carlisle
, directly competing with the Thomson Corporation's weekly
Franklin Chronicle,
established in 1872. While the paper's office was in
Springboro, the paper was produced at the offices of
The
Western Star in Lebanon. A Sunday edition, called the
Sunday Star Press, was established in the early 1990s in
order to distribute advertising circulars.
In 1998,
Brown traded the Star Press along with The Western
Star, Today's Express in Morrow
, the
Monroe
Times,
and the Miamisburg
-West Carrollton
News to The
Thomson Corporation, a Canadian newspaper company known for the
poor quality of its publications, in exchange for three daily
papers, the Piqua
Daily
Call, the Xenia Gazette,
and the Greenville
Daily Advocate. When the company
decided to exit the newspaper business, Thompson sold the
Star
Press to Cox on
September 1,
2000, though only after Thompson's original
plans to sell the paper to
Gannett, owner of
The Cincinnati
Enquirer, fell apart. Cox switched publication to
Wednesday from the original Tuesday effective
July 4,
2001, and ceased
publication of the
Sunday Star Press on
June 24,
2001.
Cox also moved
printing of the paper from Lebanon to Hamilton
, where it owned the daily Journal-News and began
distributing the paper free to subscribers of its Dayton Daily News and Middletown Journal.
In August 2002, Cox announced it was closing the
Star
Press and a final edition was scheduled for
August 28. Carl Esposito, the Cox vice president
in charge of
Star Press and its sister weeklies, told
The Cincinnati
Enquirer the papers had been losing money since Cox
acquired them two years before. "We really don't want to blame it
on the economy," he said. "The issue here is a very difficult
decision around the fact that these publications were losing money
despite our best efforts to remedy that." However, on
August 23, Cox announced it was in talks with a
buyer for the paper and it would continue publication until those
talks concluded. A deal was reached in October for the paper to be
acquired by the newly established Miller Publishing, which bought
the paper and three other weeklies, on
November 1,
2002.
References
- Felicity Barringer. "Increased Consolidation in the Newspaper
Industry". The New York
Times. June 9, 2000. C2.
- Jon Bohmer. "Cox acquires papers." Dayton Daily News. September 2, 2000. 1A.
- "Cox Sells Four Weekly Newspapers". Dayton Daily News. October 11, 2002. E1.
- John Eckberg. "134 papers on the block." The Cincinnati Enquirer. February 16, 2000. B10.
- John Eckberg. "Enquirer's parent buys Ohio papers." The
Cincinnati Enquirer.
June 9, 2000. D10.
- John Eckberg. "Cox buys 12 area newspapers." The Cincinnati Enquirer. July 15, 2000. 1C.
- "4 Weeklies to Publish While Sale Talks Continue". Dayton Daily News. August 24, 2002. E1.
- Amy Higgins. "Cox to drop four weekly papers south of Dayton".
The Cincinnati
Enquirer. August 17, 2002. 1D.
- Lynn Hulsey. "Gannett to buy Thompson newspapers". Dayton Daily News. June 9, 2000. A1.
- Lynn Hulsey. "Other papers to join Cox". Dayton Daily News. September 2, 2000. 1E.
- "Miller Publishing Forms From Cox Newspapers". Dayton Daily News. November 2, 2002. E1.
- 1920-1995, Commitment to Community: Warren County.
Lebanon, Ohio
?: Brown Publishing Company, 1995.
- Jason Roberson. "Cox to Stop Publishing 2 Weeklies:
'Chronicle', 'Star Press' Losing Money". Dayton Daily News. August 16, 2002. E1.
- Matthew Rose. "Thomson Agrees to Sell 38 of 54 Dailies to
Gannett and Community Newspapers". The Wall Street Journal. June 9, 2000. A6.
- Angela Townsend. "Newspaper chains trade". Dayton Daily News. June 11, 1998. 5B.
- "Weeklies Change". Dayton
Daily News. June 5, 2001. 2B.