Los Angeles Public Library puts the Herald-Examiner online
Historians researching stories about Los Angeles have a vast new archive to peruse in the newly digitized archive of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, recently made available through the Los Angeles Public Library. “For my 21 years as a Los Angeles librarian, the one thing I have longed for above all is a digitized Herald-Examiner. It has finally happened!!!,” Christina Rice, Senior Librarian for the Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection, posted to Instagram today. “With a @lapubliclibrary card, access is available remotely and for free!!” The Los Angeles Public Library already owns the newspaper’s photo morgue of 2.2 million images, so now you can match the photos with the original stories.
A Los Angeles Herald-Examiner newsrack in 1989Credit: Photo by Herald Examiner Collection/Los Angeles Public Library
While the newspaper had long been available in microfilm form, it was not electronically searchable. Meaning that one would need a general idea of when the historical event they were curious about happened and then prepare for the long slog of reading through every page of every issue until you stumbled upon the story. We have not yet seen how deep the rabbit hole goes with the Herald-Examiner, but its competitor, the Los Angeles Times, has more than 7.6 million searchable pages available on the library’s database dating back to 1881.
When the Los Angeles Herald newspaper launched on October 2, 1873, the total population of Los Angeles was around 5,700 people. That means every citizen of frontier-era L.A. would fit comfortably inside the Shrine Auditorium. The paper was printed on a steam press on South Broadway with windows that allowed the public to see the news coming to life. Not long after William Randolph Hearst came to town in 1903 to start his Los Angeles Examiner, he hired California’s first licensed female architect, Julia Morgan, to design a spectacular new headquarters a few blocks south at 11th and Broadway. The two rival papers co-existed until 1962 when they merged into the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.
Agness “Aggie” Underwood was with the newspaper from 1935 until 1968Credit: Photo by Herald Examiner Collection/Los Angeles Public Library
During the 1960s, the Times and Herald-Examiner circulation ran neck and neck, but the paper was crippled by a decade-long strike that was resolved in 1977. Not long after, Esquire named the Her-Ex the “worst urban daily newspaper in America.” It published its final edition in 1989. All 122 years of the newspaper’s history are now searchable through the Los Angeles Public Library. Rice signed her post with “Happy searching Angelenos!”