New York Times Editorial titled “Save Stars and Stripes”

[David Lockmiller]

New York Times Editorial titled “Save Stars and Stripes” published September 16, 2020:

Stars and Stripes — a Department of Defense organization partly funded by the military and a newspaper authorized by Congress to be independent of the military command — does not qualify for continuous funding in a continuing resolution. Congress must do that.

[T]he venerable daily newspaper of America’s military service members was dropped from the Pentagon’s budget request this year, and the Department of Defense told the paper to prepare to close down at the end of September.

Initially printed during the Civil War and a fixture of military life for generations, Stars and Stripes is today a multimedia operation that reaches about 1.4 million service members even on the most remote bases where there is no internet or cellphone service, with day-to-day coverage of news most important to them — pay, benefits, health issues and the like. The paper has never shied away from reporting on issues the Pentagon may prefer to keep quiet — a recent headline, for example, was, “Why Is Fort Hood the Army’s Most Crime-Ridden Post?”

The $15.5 million line item is a negligible fraction — one-48,000th — of the Pentagon’s budget.

Source of the following information on the subject of “Stars and Stripes (newspaper)” is Wikipedia:

On November 9, 1861, during the Civil War, soldiers of the 11th, 18th, and 29th Illinois Regiments set up camp in the Missouri city of Bloomfield. Finding the local newspaper's office empty, they decided to print a newspaper about their activities. They called it the Stars and Stripes. Tradition holds this as the origin story for the newspaper and the Stars and Stripes Museum/Library Association is located in Bloomfield.

Stars and Stripes is in the process of digitizing its World War II editions.

The newspaper has been published continuously in Europe since 1942 and in the Pacific since 1945.

Notable former Stars and Stripes staffers include: CBS 60 Minutes' Andy Rooney and Steve Kroft.

American comic strips have been presented in a 15-page section, Stripes' Sunday Comics.