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Soon after the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court school integration decision, the Louisville Courier-Journal opened a crusade so low keyed that many readers did not realize a crusade was going on. For nearly two years, the Journal took pains to report in detail instances of peaceful integration everywhere. The running story was buttressed by quiet editorials designed to disarm prejudice before it could arise. In 1956, the Journal's crusade ended in unspectacular triumph: Louisville's public school system was voluntarily desegregated—without incident. Such liberalism on the subject of the South's touchy race problem goes back a long way. "Marse Henry" Watterson, the Journal's first editor, was at best a neutralist. But Robert Worth Bingham, the man who bought the paper in 1918, was not. Under him and his son George Barry, who succeeded him as publisher, the Journal became an early champion of the Negro's full rights as a citizen. Louisville has been accustomed by long habit to seeing Negro faces in the paper's society section. Other Journal roles suit the paper well—and suit Kentucky too. Because the state highway department absorbs one-third of the budget, the Journal keeps a man prying fulltime into the department's affairs—just in case. A Journal investigation of political influence in Kentucky's schoolboard system blew the whole system apart and sent one superintendent to prison. The Journal stays hard at work moving ahead of its readers, then gently but persistently urging them to catch up.
THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL
Whatever they say about us, they can't control us. We're out to serve the public. That's a redblooded, virile statement, and, by God, it's true.
—Harry Grant
Circulation 377,000 evenings. 570,000 Sundays. Independent. Since 1932 has supported a Democrat for President five times (Roosevelt twice, Stevenson twice, and Kennedy), a Republican twice (Willkie in 1940, Dewey in 1948); endorsed no candidate in 1944.
The Milwaukee Journal richly earns its title as an independent newspaper. In one election, it supported candidates from four political parties (Socialist, Democrat, Republican and Progressive). When one of Milwaukee's beer barons asked the paper to go light on his May-December marriage to his secretary, the Journal splashed the story over a full page. Leading Wisconsin liberals damn the Journal as too conservative; to Wisconsin's late U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy, the paper was "the Milwaukee edition of The Worker." It is so sternly dedicated to the letter of the law that it crusades against church bingo and refuses to publish the results of horse races. "We must have freedom, freedom, freedom, so the Journal can act entirely as it sees best for the community," said the late Publisher Harry Grant, and this principle is the paper's guide. It has helped bring the city everything from a big-league baseball franchise (the Braves) to a $327,000,000 expressway. Milwaukeeans do not always follow the Journal's advice, but they invariably respect it. "Milwaukee couldn't do without the Journal," says Editor Lindsay Hoben, and then he completes the equation: "The Journal couldn't do without Milwaukee."
Minneapolis Morning tribune