| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
The Post-Standard originally was started in 1829 as the Onondaga Standard. It became the Daily Standard in the 1880s and merged with the Syracuse Post on New Year's Day in 1899. It was on this day that the name was changed to the Post-Standard.
It should be noted that during this time, the Syracuse Herald-Journal also co-existed. The Herald-Journal was the result of the merger of the Syracuse Journal and the Evening Herald in 1939. Soon afterward, William Randolph Hearst's paper, the Sunday American, became known as the Herald-American. The Herald-Journal, Herald-American, and Post Standard all were purchased in 1944 by Samuel I. Newhouse. He is the man for whom the Syracuse University S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications ( nicknamed Newhouse by locals and alumni ) is named. Newhouse currently is one of the top Schools of Communications in the world.
Until 1993, the papers remained mostly independent from each other, outside of ownership. The Post-Standard was published in the morning, The Herald-Journal in the afternoon, and The Herald-American on Sundays (which technically served as both the Post and the Herald). In 1993, the local news desks were merged into one section, whose section was named CNY in reference to Central New York. In 2001, the Herald and the Post merged and resulted in just one paper, the Post-Standard.
Today, the papers are still owned by the Newhouse family, whose company is named Advance Publications. Along with the Syracuse paper, Advance also publishes Parade Magazine, the New Orleans Times Picayune, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The newspaper features a technology column by Al Fasoldt called "Technofile", which is presumably a play on the word "Technophile".
On August 25, 2004, he published an article reviewing Wikipedia, refering to it as "untrustworthy, and should be avoided" and separately as "outrageous", "repugnant" and "dangerous".[1] This proved to be a hot button article for supporters and critics of the project, with a search of Google resulting in at least 315 blogs and other sites mentioning the commentary.
One of these was techdirt.com, which challenged Al Fasoldt to vandalize the article about the city in which his newspaper is located, Syracuse.[2] There is no evidence of Fasoldt taking up the challenge, but several other readers decided to put Wikipedia to the test.
On September 15, another journalist for the paper, Brian Cubbison followed-up on the controversy[3], stating that one tester, Alex Halavais had reported that vandalism to Wikipedia articles is usually fixed within hours, a statement that he backed up with data from his testing, which he dubbed "The Isuzu Experiment."[4] Halavais had added a false fact in the history section of the Syracuse article, but this was removed by a Wikipedian about an hour and a half later. A more obvious false fact was placed elsewhere in the article, and this was removed within 45 minutes. Post-Standard reporter Cubbison ended his article by stating there were still three mistakes in the Syracuse article, one that had been there since June, but did not mention what these were.
Syracuse.com, which hosts the paper online