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When The Indianapolis News closed Oct. 1, 1999, after 130 years of publication, it published a special farewell edition to commemorate its achievements. Employees like Stephanie Digney sold the special edition on street corners outside the newspaper offices. -- 1999 News file photo   Special section • Star Century: 100 years of The Indianapolis Star

The obituary was written Oct. 1, 1999. But for employees of The Indianapolis News -- a scrappy afternoon newspaper that called itself "The Great Hoosier Daily" -- the end really came four years earlier.

That's when the newspaper's shrinking staff was merged with that of The Indianapolis Star in a jarring, cost-cutting move that helped pave the way for their corporate parent's sale to Virginia-based Gannett Co.

During the last of The News' 130 years in print, it had been an updated version of the dominant Star. Produced by a skeleton crew, it kept a separate editorial page and ran a few different features and breaking news stories.

Old "Newsies" like Jack Averitt helped put the paper out at its zenith. They fondly recall its fierce rivalry with their sister publication, also controlled by the Pulliam family.

At the Statehouse, Averitt, who covered every General Assembly session from 1952 to 1988, was known for his mastery of state tax and budget issues.

Many readers didn't distinguish between the papers, he said, often blurring their identities together as the "Star News." But politicians -- and some readers -- got it.

Averitt, who retired in 1988 after more than 37 years with the paper, still laughs about S. Hugh Dillin, now a retired federal judge, chiding The Star while serving in the Indiana Senate. Dillin did it with a poem that went like this: Twinkle, twinkle little Star, sometimes in politics you go too far. And when you stub your toe and lose, to your rescue comes The News."

"Hugh Dillin and The Star used to tangle," Averitt explained. "And when The Star made a mistake, we'd correct them."

Mostly, the paper was known for solid journalism.

The News got its start in 1869 under 23-year-old owner John H. Holliday. Just 100,000 people inhabited Indianapolis and suburbs such as Haughville, Irvington and Woodruff Place.

The News was the city's first successful afternoon daily. Later it was joined by the Scripps Howard-owned Indianapolis Times.

The News always boasted a powerful editorial voice. In 1932, the paper won a Pulitzer Prize for a campaign to cut government waste and trim taxes.

Eugene C. Pulliam bought the paper in 1948, the same year The Star became Indiana's largest newspaper.

Over the years, The News featured Herman Hoglebogle going bonkers over potholes, R.K. Shull on the TV beat and Ed Zeigner roasting powerful politicians. Quirky features such as The Bar Beat, a column by the late L.T. Brown that chronicled events at local watering holes, and Did You Notice, a list of unusual happenings on city streets, shaped the paper's personality.

The News boasted hard-hitting investigations, including stories in the mid-1980s that unearthed corruption in the Indiana Department of Education under Superintendent Harold Negley and in the Indiana Department of Correction under Commissioner Gordon Faulkner, forcing both men from office.

"We tried to get the jump on The Star. The Star tried to get the jump on us," said Skip Hess, who worked on both probes.

"I think it made us a better newspaper," said Hess, who writes an outdoors column for The Star. He started with the paper in 1967 and took early retirement after 32 years, when The News was shut down.

"I never, ever, ever remember a day when I didn't want to go to work," Hess said.

That's how Welton W. Harris II felt, too. Harris, whose friends call him Art, started work Jan. 2, 1968, the day Richard Lugar became Indianapolis mayor, and prowled the City-County Building, mostly covering courts.

Harris wrote a story in 1991 that freed Bobby Lee Houston, who had been wrongly held in the Marion County Jail for nearly four months after child molestation charges against him had been dropped. And he covered the rape trial of boxer Mike Tyson in 1992.

"That was really a three-ring circus," Harris said.

After the paper's staffs were merged, Harris went to The Star's fledgling Metro North bureau, where he retired in 2001.

It came as little shock to News staffers that changes in the way people live their lives -- and the economics of newspaper publishing -- would doom The News. That happened to afternoon dailies across the country.

The Indianapolis Times stopped publishing Oct. 11, 1965, leaving The Star and The News to fight it out over who got the best comics, then over who got the best reporters and, finally, over who got the most readers.

After Pulliam's death in 1975, his son, Eugene S. Pulliam, became publisher. He kept The News on life support for years after circulation began to plummet, saying the press would not stop rolling on his watch.

Pulliam's death Jan. 20, 1999, after 23 years leading the country's 10th-largest newspaper firm, foreshadowed The News' demise nearly eight months later.

At its peak, in 1966, The News had a circulation of 200,433.

In the end, it had fewer than 34,000 subscribers.

On the final day, TV crews and reporters congregated in the newsroom. With the push of a button, Russell Pulliam, editor of The News, son of the late publisher, started the presses.

With a simple headline -- "Farewell" -- the paper's staff said goodbye.

Call Star reporter Kevin Corcoran at 1-317-615-2384.