The Battle over ‘Stars and Stripes’
Since the beginning of the year, the Department of Defense has been trying to remake Stars and Stripes, the newspaper first published during the Civil War and then revived during the world wars to give our fighting men and women independent and uncensored news about the military they serve. Until last week, it was unclear exactly how the new newspaper would be different. Then on Friday the Pentagon’s brass sent termination letters to the paper’s publisher, editor-in-chief, and one of its star correspondents.
The spin on these changes is that the paper was in desperate need of an overhaul. William Urban, the new military deputy to the publisher of Stars and Stripes and a former spokesman for the Navy and the Pentagon, explained in a lengthy open letter that he intends to modernize the paper and build its readership, which he claimed was fewer than 30,000 digital subscribers and a print circulation of less than 10,000. His mission, he said, was: “More eyeballs on our content and more impact on our service members while maintaining the highest standard of professional journalism with the credibility that comes with editorial independence.”