Some people make headlines while others make history.Still others find time to do both.
The Anniston Star’s history has both shaped and been molded by the community it serves, a narrative pieced together by the folks who live it and those who report it. It never looks like history to those living through it.
Each day, the newspaper’s presses roll out the first draft of a continuing local story that, dramatic and often moving, never reaches an end.
“My family is determined to rescue The Star from the pot of homogenized sameness that describes most chain papers,” wrote H. Brandt Ayers in a recent editorial column. Ayers is chairman and publisher of Consolidated Publishing Co., The Star’s parent company. “We want to maintain the passionate commitment of an owner to a city, and we’re working on a plan to do that. Stay tuned.”
The Star’s story begins 13 miles north of Anniston in the city of Jacksonville. There, a physician named Thomas W. Ayers purchased The Jacksonville Republican at the turn of the 19th century, but the location was short-lived. Dr. Ayers moved the paper to 11th Street in Anniston after the county seat relocated to the “model” New South city in 1900.
There, the newspaper merged with the Daily Hot Blast, so named for the blast ovens of the burgeoning steel and iron industry that dominated the Anniston of the day. Following a brief interlude under a different name, the newspaper became The Anniston Hot Blast.
A short time later, Dr. Ayers gave up his newspaper work to devote full time to his chief interest, missionary work. When he left for China to become the Southern Baptist Church’s first medical missionary to that country, he sold The Hot Blast to a man named Milton Smith.
The newspaper changed hands yet once more before returning to the Ayers family fold. Col. Harry Mell Ayers, Dr. Ayers’ son, bought back the newspaper in 1911.
The younger Ayers had returned home from a sojourn in China eight years earlier and had begun working for the city’s competing newspaper, The Anniston Evening Star, the only other survivor of some 30 to 40 newspapers that sprang up in the city around the turn of the century. It was an environment one writer of former days described as a “fertile field of failures.” Once merged under the corporate title of Consolidated Publishing Co. in 1912, the city’s remaining journalistic enterprise became a success.
In November 1959, The Star moved from its longtime address on 11th Street, across from the Calhoun County Courthouse, to a new plant on West 10th Street. Then, as now, it was the spaciousness of the new place that impressed the visitors.
Star Senior Editor George Smith remembers the old 11th Street storefront office.
“It was small, very small, and we were cramped,” Smith said. “And there was no parking. Unless you wanted to feed the meter.”
Much as it seemed to answer The Star’s immediate needs, the newer 10th Street location slowly shrank as the 12-member staff swelled to as many as 42, not including those in advertising, pagination and the pressroom.
Smith, who started working at The Star in 1955, wonders if the new building on McClellan Boulevard will hold up just as long.
“It would be interesting to see if the newspaper can grow as much in the next 43 years as it has in the last,” Smith said. “I would hope so.”
It was on 10th Street that the 54-year newspaper career of Col. Ayers, president and publisher, ended with his death in 1964. His widow, Edel Y. Ayers, served as The Star’s board chairwoman and publisher until her death in 1977. Col. Ayers’ son, H. Brandt Ayers, now wears that mantle.
Through the years, The Star has become the definition of the crusading, family newspaper, taking uncomfortable, often lonely positions during the stormy days of the Civil Rights Movement and on such life-and-death issues as chemical weapons incineration. All the while, the newspaper has striven for balance between community advocacy and strict objectivity.
A few milestones:
In the 1960s, The Star ran stories that caused the ouster of a mayor and a whole form of city government, stories that led to reform of the jury system, and stories that took aim at obstacles to black voters.When a black man was murdered by nightriders after a racist rally on the courthouse steps, a local doctor and H. Brandt Ayers raised a $20,000 reward in one evening and persuaded donors to sign a full-page ad asserting that “those who advocate and commit secret acts of violence will not control this community.” The killer was found, tried and convicted by an all-white jury.When the Civil Rights Movement was finishing off one old civilization and creating a new one, H. Brandt Ayers was managing editor of the newspaper.
“(It was) one hell of a story, and one with dazzling moral clarity,” Ayers said. “The good guys were so easy to identify, and the bad guys were so clearly noted, the two sides might as well have had uniforms.”
More recently, The Star has published articles nailing an anti-poverty agency head for buying a stretch limousine with public money. Civil Rights leaders had something to say about those stories, too, but this time in opposition to The Star’s coverage.Public education also has been close to The Star’s heart, with the publisher’s creation of Next Start, a grade-school mentoring program made up of volunteers.And in matters of economic development, the newspaper was a charter member of Forward Calhoun County, an organization that still fosters job creation as one of its main missions.The Star has weighed in carefully on the disposal of 2,254 tons of nerve agent at the Anniston Army Depot’s chemical weapons incinerator. It wasn’t until a National Academy of Science panel determined incineration to be the best alternative that the newspaper began backing the method.Through it all, The Star has maintained a passionate commitment to the outer world that had its nascent beginnings with Dr. T.W. Ayers’ first trip to China.
The Star has followed poultry exports to Moscow, textile jobs to Mexico, and has helped organize foreign travel grants for heartland editors with a Knight Foundation fellowship at the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C. The first class of World Affairs Fellows will begin this fall.
Moving the corporate headquarters to McClellan is just the latest example of The Star’s intimate relationship with the community.
Twenty years ago, people never could have imagined life without the Army, Star Executive Editor Chris Waddle said. But leave the soldiers did, and now the parade ground and officers’ club lie empty. What some initially saw as a disaster has become the city’s greatest opportunity, and The Star, as the first business to locate at the former fort, is leading the effort to rebuild.
The new building is a living symbol of The Star’s community mission, Waddle said. He likened the structure to a religious sacrament:
“It’s a very outward and visible sign of an inward grace, which is the cherished relationship between the newspaper and the community.”
