an afternoon paper, leaving the morning field to the Los Angeles Times (which at the same time had ceased publication of the evening Mirror). However, readers' tastes and demographics were changing. Afternoon newspaper readership was declining as television news became more prominent, while expanding suburbs made it harder to distribute papers during the rush hour. The fact that sports leagues were playing more night games also meant that evening newspapers were no longer able to print full results. Indeed, by the 1950s Hearst's morning papers such as the Examiner had their income siphoned off merely to support the chain's faltering afternoon publications. Following the merger between the Herald-Express and Examiner, readership of the morning Los Angeles Times soared to 757,000 weekday readers and more than 1 million on Sunday. The Herald Examiners circulation dropped from a high of 730,000 in the mid-1960s to 350,000 in 1977. By the time it closed in 1989 its circulation was 238,000. Strike and closure On December 15, 1967, Herald Examiner employees began a strike that lasted almost a decade and resulted in at least $15 million in losses. At the time of the labor strike, the paper's circulation was about 721,000 daily and it had 2,000 employees. The strike ended in March 1977, with circulation having dropped to about 350,000 and the number of employees to 700. Owner William Randolph Hearst, Jr.'s confrontational response prolonged the unrest. He hired a number of strike-breakers to keep the paper going, as well as Pinkerton guards to maintain security, protect the strike-breakers and harass the strikers. Numerous violent incidents took place between pickets and strike-breakers, as well as confrontations between the guards and the Los Angeles Police Department. Final years The paper enjoyed a journalistic and spiritual renaissance beginning in 1978, when Jim Bellows was hired as its editor. "On January 1, Jim Bellows came to Los Angeles as editor of the worst urban daily newspaper in America, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner," read a profile in Esquire magazine, in 1978. Bellows and his successor, Mary Ann Dolan, brought an infusion of new talent, youth and energy to the newsroom. The excitement of rejuvenating a newspaper in Los Angeles with a storied past attracted a stream of young journalists, many with Ivy League credentials. The paper's scrappy, no-holds-barred, often unconventional coverage repeatedly challenged the dominant Los Angeles Times on stories about City Hall, local politics, the Los