The Morning Times was founded on March 18, 1894, by union printers. Financial difficulties, however, soon forced the printers to sell to Charles G. Conn, a Democratic congressman from Indiana. In August 1895 the Washington Evening Times was added, and the two editions sold as a combined subscription. The evening edition soon became dominant, substantially surpassing the morning paper’s circulation. Late the following year, Conn sold both editions to Stilson Hutchins who had sold his interest in the Washington Post a few years earlier. In 1901 Frank A. Munsey, who was known for his consolidation practices and as a destroyer of the dailies, purchased the paper and ran it from the Munsey Building, which he had built on E Street in the northwest quadrant of the city. Munsey ceased printing the morning edition on November 29, 1902, and his evening and Sunday editions became known, simply, as the Washington Times. William Randolph Hearst gained control of the Times in 1917 and five years later merged it with the Washington Herald.

The Washington Herald first appeared on October 8, 1906 with the aim of upholding serious journalism in an era of muckraking. The paper was founded and edited by Scott C. Bone, an eminent newspaperman and former managing editor of the Washington Post from 1888 until his dismissal by new owner John R. McLean in 1905. Bone published the 16-page morning daily to challenge the position of the Post as the foundation of Washington journalism. At its peak, the Herald enjoyed a circulation of roughly 50,000, and surpassed the Post in daily sales. It occupied offices at 734 Fifteenth Street, in close vicinity to newspaper row in the city’s northwest quadrant, and its editorial board included prominent figures such as managing editor William P. Spargeon, the first president of the National Press Club. Bone himself garnered respect in the newspaper world for his work with the Post, and later the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and went on to become governor of Alaska.

The paper created a niche for itself based on substantive news reporting, displaying the motto “A Paper of Quality” on its masthead. An early advertisement proclaimed the arrival of the Herald as a “clean, compact, newsy newspaper that would appeal to the intelligent and discriminating clientele of Washington.” Its front page most prominently featured discussions of domestic politics, followed by stories of international scope, and the occasional newsworthy crime or personal interest story. The Herald also included a page each on sports, market news, and women’s interest, plus a slew of advertisements and classifieds. Its Sunday edition attempted to rival that of the Post with a 30-page edition featuring special sections on society news, literature, theater, and serialized fiction.

Although the Herald rose to be one of the top three penny dailies in Washington, it underwent a series of transformations after its second decade. In 1913, Clinton T. Brainerd, president of the McClure Syndicate Service, purchased the paper. In 1922, the Herald was taken over by William Randolph Hearst who appointed one of the first female newspaper editors of the era – Eleanor Medill “Cissy” Patterson of the Medill media dynasty. Cissy Patterson revived the paper and its popularity, and in 1939 she merged it with the Washington Times creating the Washington Times-Herald. After her death in 1948, however, the paper declined once again. The Herald died an ironic death in 1954 when the Times-Herald was merged with the Washington Post. Although named the Washington Post and Times Herald, the Post restored its original name in 1973 and the Herald faded into obscurity.

William M. and H.V. Hamilton Jr. had lived their lives in newspapers prior to establishing the Palestine Daily Herald in 1902. Their father, H.V. Hamilton, Sr., wrote for and edited The Tyler Reporter . Soon after the Civil War, he helped establish The Tyler Democrat and later went on to publish and edit the newly merged Tyler Democrat and Reporter. Consequently, the Hamilton brothers grew up around printing offices, thoroughly learning the newspaper trade. They first attempted newspaper publishing on their own in 1898, leaving Tyler but remaining in East Texas to publish The Palestine Daily Press . They soon sold this paper, and ventured south to Monterrey, Mexico, with plans to establish a newspaper there.

By 1902, however, the Hamiltons had returned to Texas where they inaugurated the Palestine Daily Herald and set to work creating the city’s leading paper. The Daily Herald was a Democratic paper, issued every afternoon except Sunday. Each edition featured eight pages measuring 15 x 22 inches; a weekly subscription cost ten cents, while an annual subscription cost five dollars. The Daily Herald had 900 subscribers in 1903 and 1,200 in 1910, when the population of Palestine stood at 9,773. The paper also covered news in the nearby communities of Nacogdoches and Tyler.

The editorial masthead attributed the paper to “The Hamilton Boys, You Know,” and the front-page nameplate invariably employed, just beneath the dateline, an eye-catching phrase meant to woo citizens and advertisers alike to its pages. Primarily, this line carried circulation boasts, quoting numbers and nicknaming itself “The Growing Paper.” In 1903, such boasts led to a public dispute with the editors of The Daily Visitor, in which the Hamiltons, in a series of editorials, chided The Visitor as a little child and invited their rivals to prove claims that the Herald perpetrated boastful lies about its circulation. The line at the bottom of the Herald’s nameplate not only promoted the paper’s prowess, but also announced community events, such as the 1903 East Texas Carnival and Fruit Show. The Palestine Daily Herald fashioned itself as a serious news outlet, mixing local stories and information (reported by the Herald staff) with national and international items from the wire.

Many local stories ran under various column names and featured headlines such as “Personal Notes,” “Personal Mention” (later re-cast as a “Society” column by Mrs. Caddie Winston Herrington), “Court House Notes,” “Heard at Random,” and “Dissolution Notices.” “Special Correspondents” from throughout Anderson County (and signing off with such monikers as Boll Weevil, Ripples, Pickle, Sweet Roxy, Goo-Goo, and P.P. Funderburk) would report rural happenings in the editorial section. In addition, the paper never neglected to report the results in the new Texas League baseball circuit.

Beside the Palestine Daily Herald, the Hamilton brothers concurrently published the weekly Anderson County Herald. After H.V. Hamilton, Jr., retired in 1935, the sons of William Hamilton kept the Palestine Daily Herald operational until 1949.

Because of frequent name changes, the history of the Paducah Sun, Paducah’s oldest continuously published daily can be confusing. The paper began in 1877 as the Paducah Daily Sun , with a Sunday edition known as the Weekly Sun. It was followed by the Paducah Daily Sun , owned by Frank M. Fisher, who by 1896 had bought the Sun Publishing Company and who two years later consolidated the daily and weekly titles into the Paducah Sun. This singular title was edited briefly by Frank W. Gregory until 1899, when Fisher took hold of the editorial reins. A year later, Fisher was joined by his nephew, Edwin J. Paxton.

In 1901, the Paducah Sun introduced the Sunday Chat for the “quiet of the Sabbath.” By 1902, another version of the paper–the Paducah Sun (Weekly ed.) – appeared on Thursdays, along with the regular daily edition. That same year, the name of the weekly was formally changed to the Paducah Weekly Sun ; it was continuously published until at least 1913. At first, the Weekly Sun was less substantive than its daily sibling, with only four pages compared to the daily’s eight and with national, international, and local news crammed into eight narrow columns of small print. As subscriptions increased and its popularity grew, the Weekly Sun gradually came to resemble its daily counterpart, with six columns of regular type and virtually identical content. In 1906, the Paducah Evening Sun appeared, first under the direction of Paxton and Fisher, and later an associate editor, Elliott C. Mitchell. By 1914, Fisher had retired, selling his share of the paper and the publishing company, leaving Paxton the sole proprietor. The Paducah Evening Sun thrived during these years, with more than 25,000 subscribers in McCracken County and in the surrounding area.

Although the Evening Sun was a more nationally comprehensive paper than most in Kentucky at the time, its reporting nevertheless focused heavily on local developments, many of which involved acts of violence. These included the Black Patch Wars of 1906-1911, when western Kentucky was terrorized by Night Riders, who organized a campaign of intimidation against tobacco farmers unwilling to participate in the pooling of produce. It was not uncommon also to read morbid accounts of racial killings and beatings, written with a flair that would be unacceptable by today’s standards. One typical incident involved a disagreement between a white farmer and his African American tenant, which culminated in a lynching.

The coup de grâce came in 1929, when the staunchly Republican Sun acquired its Democratic rival, the News=Democrat. The two papers were merged into the Sun-Democrat until 1978, when, at the behest of Edwin J. Paxton’s grandson, Jack, it returned to its original title: the Paducah Sun. In 2009, the Paxtons continue to own the Sun, making it one of Kentucky’s oldest familial enterprises.

Historians have referred to Ogden, Utah, as the graveyard of western journalism because of the short life expectancy of the dozens of newspapers that sprang up there after 1869. The completion of the transcontinental railroad that year quickly transformed the sleepy agricultural town into a bustling transportation hub. Newspapers came and went, vying for the thousands of potential readers arriving on the nine rail lines with terminals in the city. The Ogden Standard bucked the trend. Founded by Frank J. Cannon, the Standard first appeared on January 1, 1888, with its front page featuring a poem entitled “A Hymn to Progress.” When Cannon was elected to the U.S. Congress four years later, the paper’s business manager, William Glassman, took over day-to-day operations. He acquired the Standard outright in 1894 and quickly molded it into a promotional organ for his own political career- Glassman served three terms as mayor.

The paper also carried world and national news. When the Spanish American War erupted in 1898, the story occupied the Standard’s entire front page. Local news included articles about Utah’s booming mining industry, notes from the local police blotter, and such nuggets as the Christmas Eve 1907 account of a hapless man who accidentally killed his friend in a failed attempt to shoot his cowboy hat off with a pistol.

In 1920, the paper merged with the Morning Examiner, becoming the Ogden Standard-Examiner. Today, the Standard-Examiner is the third-largest daily in the state.

Within three years after Mormon pioneers settled the valley of the Great Salt Lake, Brigham Young established the Deseret News. Taking its name from the old term for the Utah Territory – a “deseret” is a honeybee, according to the Book of Mormon – the newspaper first appeared on June 15, 1850, on a $60 press that had traveled 1,100 miles by ox-cart across the country to Salt Lake City. The News began as a weekly; its first edition masthead proclaiming “Truth and Liberty.” As the official organ of the Church of the Latter-day Saints, the newspaper published gospel-related items and espoused Mormon theology. Yet it also covered national events, for Brigham Young did not want readers to find themselves isolated from the “outside world.”

In 1865, the paper became a semiweekly, appearing on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and two years later it added a daily edition called the Deseret Evening News. The newspaper printed its first “action” photographs on May 12, 1900, when it printed five images of a mine explosion at Scofield, Utah, which killed over 200 men in the nation’s worst mine disaster up to that time. Appearing eleven days after the blast, the grim photos depicted wagons loaded with coffins and stretcher-bearers bringing out the dead.

After the turn of the century, the paper began to attract readers with innovative large-type, banner headlines that extended across the entire front page. One of these appeared on September 7, 1901, the day after President William McKinley was shot, proclaiming, “GOD BLESS OUR PRESIDENT.” A week later, another banner announced McKinley’s death in inch-high letters. At that time, News employed more than 100 reporters, editors, copyboys – even a society-page maven – under the direction of general manager Horace “Bud” Whitney, who had taken over the newspaper three years earlier. Hired to raise circulation numbers, Whitney expanded the coverage of sports, introduced a regular mining, business, and stocks section, and placed a larger emphasis on society and fashion.

By the 1920s, the Deseret News had moved its operation to downtown Salt Lake, installing a 50-horsepower printing press capable of producing 32,000 copies per hour. In 1922, the newspaper discontinued the semiweekly, but branched out into new territory with a radio station. Known today as the Deseret Morning News, the paper boasts the second highest readership of any daily in Utah. It remains the longest running American newspaper west of the Missouri River and continues to operate both as a widely read news source and as an official organ of the Mormon Church.

Established in 1834 as a successor to several papers dating back as early as 1800, the Gazette began as a voice of the Whig Party but eventually turned to a Democratic view. For the time, that was hardly an unusual political evolution for a Virginia paper. What did, however, make the paper somewhat unique in nineteenth-century Virginia was its forceful and effective support of industrialization throughout the South. Situated across the Potomac from the Washington Navy Yard, Alexandria was a growing riverfront community that could boast of considerable industry for its size—including brickworks; shoe, furniture, and machinery factories; breweries; ship chandleries and boat yards; and rail lines for both the Baltimore & Ohio and Chesapeake & Ohio Railroads. By 1900, the city had a population of 6,430 and was increasingly affected by—and prospered from—the growth of the federal government and its payroll. Its perspective, then, was unlike most Virginia papers.

Too, the Gazette by 1900 was the dominant daily newspaper and an influential voice in the community. Since 1865, at least 23 papers had begun publication in Alexandria but then disappeared. In the 1890s alone, six shut down. By 1900, then, the Gazette’s competition was reduced primarily to the Alexandria Times, but even that paper would barely survive the decade. Particularly noteworthy is how fertile the Alexandria region had been for the African-American press. But the Clipper had ceased business in 1894, and its successor the Leader and Clipper ended in 1898; the
Home News, established in 1902, and the Industrial Advocate, opened circa 1900, disappeared within several years as well. The point, though, is that the papers reflected a perceived need within a substantial enough minority community that any major paper—whatever its politics, whatever its bias—would be compelled to take its existence into account in reporting on local government and the economy.

Thus, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Alexandria Gazette could legitimately comment on its considerable significance to the growing northern Virginia community and region. “The files of the paper,” the editor wrote, “are the official and unabridged history of Alexandria, and while numbers of other papers have appeared and disappeared during all the years of its existence, it has weathered all the storms of time. . . .”