''The Marion Star'' (formerly known as ''The Marion Daily Star'') is a newspaper in
Marion, Ohio
Marion is a city in and the county seat of Marion County, Ohio, United States. The municipality is located in north-central Ohio, approximately north of Columbus.
The population was 35,999 at the 2020 census, slightly down from 36,837 at the ...
. The paper is owned by the
Gannett
Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.Warren G. Harding (prior to his election as President of the United States), and his wife Florence Kling Harding.
History
Founded as the ''Daily Pebble'', the format of the small daily grew and became ''The Marion Daily Star''. When Harding acquired the newspaper in the 1880s, it was struggling. The dubious financial position of ''The Marion Daily Star'' improved following the marriage of Harding to Florence Kling DeWolfe who promptly set about to straighten out the accounting, and increasing circulation.
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
founder and
Socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
candidate for President
Norman Thomas
Norman Mattoon Thomas (November 20, 1884 – December 19, 1968) was an American Presbyterian minister who achieved fame as a socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.
Early years
Thomas was the ...
carried the ''Daily Star'' as a youngster growing up in Marion where his father was minister of the First
Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their n ...
Church.
Under Harding the newspaper's editorial position leaned toward the Republican Party platform, but remained somewhat neutral because of its position of the daily newspaper of record for Marion County. However, Harding also launched ''The Marion Weekly Star'' – a once-a-week summary newspaper designed for mail delivery and rural circulation; this paper was unapologetically Republican in its editorials. The Weekly Star was published from the 1890s into the 1910s when it was discontinued.
The Hardings retained ownership in the paper until mid-1923 when they sold the business to
Brush-Moore Newspapers Brush-Moore Newspapers, Inc. was a United States newspaper group based in Ohio which had its origins in 1923 and was sold to Thomson Newspapers in 1967 for $72 million, the largest ever newspaper transaction at that time.Thompson Newspaper
The Thomson Corporation was one of the world's largest information companies. It was established in 1989 following a merger between International Thomson Organisation Ltd (ITOL) and Thomson Newspapers. In 2008, it purchased Reuters Group to fo ...
chain based in
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...
, who acquired Brush-Moore Newspapers in 1967. Under their ownership, the name was briefly changed to ''The Star'' in an attempt to broaden the marketability of the paper beyond the Marion County region. Again known as ''The Marion Star'', the paper is owned and operated by
Gannett
Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.Mansfield, Ohio
Mansfield is a city in and the county seat of Richland County, Ohio, United States. Located midway between Columbus and Cleveland via Interstate 71, it is part of Northeast Ohio region in the western foothills of the Allegheny Plateau. The ci ...
.
The Marion Ohio Public Library and The Ohio Historical Society maintain microfilm libraries of newspaper for public research; the paper is also accessible for a monthly subscription fee through www.ancestry.com and www.newspaperarchives.com.