 |
The history of newspapers in California dates back to 1846, with the first publication of The Californian in Monterey. Since then California has been served by a large number of newspapers based in many cities.
| |
The history of newspapers in California dates back to 1846, with the first publication of The Californian in Monterey. Since then California has been served by a large number of newspapers based in many cities.
The first newspaper published by Americans in California was The Californian , printed in Monterey in 1846 announcing the Mexican–American War, written half in English and half Spanish. The press was moved to San Francisco and printing started up again on May 22, 1847 in competition with the weekly California Star published by Mormon pioneer Sam Brannan, beginning that January. Both efforts suspended publication in the face of the California Gold Rush. By August, The Californian had resumed publication, but by November 1848, both papers were bought and merged then renamed the Alta California. The press that once printed The Californian was moved to the Sacramento area to be used on the Placer Times . The press was again moved and began publishing the Motherlode's first paper, the Sonora Herald, then taken to Columbia to print the Columbia Star. Within a few years of gold discovery, mother lode towns all had multiple competing journals.
San Jose, California's first city, has one of the oldest newspapers in the state. The San Jose Mercury was founded in 1851 as the San Jose Weekly Visitor, while the San Jose News was founded in 1883. In 1942 the Mercury purchased the News and continued publishing both newspapers, with the Mercury as the morning paper and the News as the evening paper. In 1983 the papers were merged into the San Jose Mercury News, with morning and afternoon editions. Eventually the less-popular afternoon edition was dropped, so at present the newspaper publishes only as a morning paper. The newspaper has earned several awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes, one in 1986 for reporting regarding political corruption in the Ferdinand Marcos administration in the Philippines, and one in 1989 for their comprehensive coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. The Mercury News was also named one of the five best-designed newspapers in the world by the Society for News Design for work done in 2001.
Los Angeles's first paper, La Estrella de Los Angeles or The Los Angeles Star, began publishing in May, 1851, also half in Spanish (until 1855). The Southern Californian began in July, 1854, and an all Spanish paper, El Clamor Publico, began competing for Spanish-speaking readers in June 1855. San Diego's first paper was the Herald, established in May 1851. Before 1860, California had 57 newspapers and periodicals serving an average readership of 290,000.
The Mountain Democrat , located in Placerville, CA, is the oldest newspaper in California, boasting continuous publication since 1851. The Mountain Democrat is a local newspaper covering news, sports, and features in El Dorado County.
The oldest continuously operated paper on the North Coast (also the oldest paper north of Sacramento) is the Eureka Times-Standard, which has been in continuous publication since it began as the Humboldt Times in September 1854. Its longest operating competitor was the Humboldt Standard, which began in 1875. After many years competing as independent dailies, both papers were managed as separate operations under the same owner for a brief period before being combined in 1967, which resulted in the current name. Local ownership also ended in 1967.
The Mountain Messenger, located in Sierra County, is California's oldest weekly publication, established in 1852. The adjudicated paper continues to be published on Thursday each week in Downieville by Carl Butz, who bought the paper from long-time editor Donald Russell in 2020.
James King of William began publishing the Daily Evening Bulletin in San Francisco in October, 1855 and built it into the highest circulation paper in San Francisco. He criticized a city supervisor named James P. Casey, who on the afternoon when the story about him had run in the paper, shot and mortally wounded King. Casey was lynched by the early vigilante committee. The Morning Call was established and began publishing in December 1856, and later merged with the Bulletin to become the long running Call-Bulletin.
The Sacramento Bee hit the streets in February, 1857 under the editorship of James McClatchy who began agitating on behalf of farmers against destructive practices of cattle ranching and hydraulic mining interests.
During the American Civil War outspoken criticism of the federal government by the editor of The Los Angeles Star led to the Star being banned from the mails, and the arrest of its editor for treason. Banned from the use of the U.S. Mail in 1864 it published its last issue in October 1864. When the Los Angeles Star ceased publication its press and equipment were sold to pro Union Phineas Banning who started printing the Wilmington Star; the paper soon changed its name to the Wilmington Journal. In 1868, the paper announced that since Los Angeles already had a strong pro Union paper in the Los Angeles Weekly Republican, (published from 1867 to 1879), there was no longer any need for continuing publication of the Wilmington Journal.
The San Francisco Chronicle debuted in June, 1865 as the Dramatic Chronicle, founded by Charles and M.H. de Young aged 19 and 17. Colonel (later General) Harrison Gray Otis took over management of two Los Angeles papers and established the Los Angeles Times.
In 1887, young William Randolph Hearst took over his father's Daily Examiner which became the flagship of his national chain.
Fremont Older became editor of the San Francisco Bulletin in 1895 and took up the struggle against the powerful Southern Pacific Railroad and along with a fellow Californian Lincoln Steffens, became a well known muckraker and the first objective observer to accuse District Attorney Charles Fickert for the framing of labor radical Thomas Mooney.
Other cities have had their own long surviving papers, including the Fresno Morning Republican , the Fresno Bee , and the Oakland Tribune.
On October 1, 1910, a bomb exploded at the L.A. Times building, killing 21 workers. Labor activists were blamed for the bombing, but the San Francisco Daily News, a four-penny paper started in 1903, defended them. The Daily News joined the Scripps-Howard in 1921. The People's World began publishing in 1938, the first leftist daily published in the West.
The oldest African-American newspaper, still active in the 1930s, was the California Eagle . It appeared first in Los Angeles in 1879. The first French journals, the Californien and the Gazette Republicane both began in 1850, and were followed by the Courrier du Pacifique in 1852. Both the first German and first Italian papers, the California Demokrat (1852) and the Voce del Popolo (1859) were founded in San Francisco and had long runs. The Chinese in California have published many newspapers, the first was the Gold Hills News in 1854.
Hearst Communications, Inc., often referred to simply as Hearst, is an American multinational mass media and business information conglomerate based in Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan in New York City.
The San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as The Daily Dramatic Chronicle by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The paper is owned by the Hearst Corporation, which bought it from the de Young family in 2000. It is the only major daily paper covering the city and county of San Francisco.
The Mercury News is a morning daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published by the Bay Area News Group, a subsidiary of Digital First Media. As of March 2013, it was the fifth largest daily newspaper in the United States, with a daily circulation of 611,194. As of 2018, the paper has a circulation of 324,500 daily and 415,200 on Sundays. As of 2021, this further declined. The Bay Area News Group no longer reports its circulation, but rather "readership". For 2021, they reported a "readership" of 312,700 adults daily.
The Pasadena Star-News is a paid local daily newspaper for the greater Pasadena, California area. The Pasadena Star-News is a member of Southern California News Group, since 1996. It is also part of the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group, along with the San Gabriel Valley Tribune and the Whittier Daily News.
Gary Stephen Webb was an American investigative journalist.
The Sacramento Union was a daily newspaper founded in 1851 in Sacramento, California. It was the oldest daily newspaper west of the Mississippi River before it closed its doors after 143 years in January 1994, no longer able to compete with The Sacramento Bee, which was founded in 1857, just six years after the Union.
Metro Newspapers, now known as Weeklys, is an American newspaper company based in San Jose, California.
The East Bay Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper based in Walnut Creek, California, United States, owned by the Bay Area News Group (BANG), a subsidiary of Media News Group, that serves Contra Costa and Alameda counties, in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. It was founded as the Contra Costa Times, and took its current name in 2016 when it was merged with other sister papers in the East Bay. Its oldest merged title is the Oakland Tribune founded in 1874.
The San Francisco Call ( Post ) was a newspaper that served San Francisco, California. Because of a succession of mergers with other newspapers, the paper variously came to be called The San Francisco Call & Post, the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, and the News-Call Bulletin before the name was finally retired after the business was purchased by the San Francisco Examiner.
The Press-Enterprise is a paid daily newspaper published by Digital First Media that serves the Inland Empire in Southern California. Headquartered in downtown Riverside, California, it is the primary newspaper for Riverside County, with heavy penetration into neighboring San Bernardino County. The geographic circulation area of the newspaper spans from the border of Orange County to the west, east to the Coachella Valley, north to the San Bernardino Mountains, and south to the San Diego County line. The Press-Enterprise is a member of the Southern California News Group.
The Alta California or Daily Alta California was a 19th-century San Francisco newspaper.
The media in the San Francisco Bay Area has historically focused on San Francisco but also includes two other major media centers, Oakland and San Jose. The Federal Communications Commission, Nielsen Media Research, and other similar media organizations treat the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose Area as one entire media market. The region hosts to one of the oldest radio stations in the United States still in existence, KCBS (AM) (740 kHz), founded by engineer Charles Herrold in 1909. As the home of Silicon Valley, the Bay Area is also a technologically advanced and innovative region, with many companies involved with Internet media or influential websites.
Newspapers in the United States have traditionally endorsed candidates for party nomination prior to their final endorsements for president. Below is the list of endorsements in 2008, by candidate, for each primary race.
The San Mateo County Times was a daily newspaper published by the Media News Group. The paper is distributed throughout San Mateo County, Monday through Saturday. Before being sold in 1996, it had been published for over 100 years as the San Mateo Times, originally published by Amphlett Publishing.
Dan Pulcrano is a journalist, editor, publisher and newspaper group owner in Northern California. He is CEO and executive editor of Metro Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley's alternative newsweekly, as well as its sister publications around the Bay Area; Good Times, the North Bay Bohemian and the Pacific Sun and East Bay Express. The group also publishes ten community newspapers, as well as magazines and related digital titles.
The Los Angeles Express was a newspaper published in Los Angeles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Founded in 1871, the newspaper was acquired by William Randolph Hearst in 1931. It merged with the Los Angeles Herald and became an evening newspaper known as the Los Angeles Herald-Express. A 1962 combination with Hearst's morning Los Angeles Examiner resulted in its final incarnation as the evening Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.
Daily Journal Corporation is an American publishing company and technology company headquartered in Los Angeles, California. The company has offices in Corona, Oakland, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Ana in California, and in Denver, Colorado ; Logan, Utah ; Phoenix, Arizona and Melbourne, Australia.
The California Digital Newspaper Collection (CDNC) is a freely-available, archive of digitized California newspapers; it is accessible through the project's website. The collection contains over six million pages from over forty-two million articles. The project is part of the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research (CBSR) at the University of California Riverside.
Viet Mercury was a Vietnamese-language newspaper serving the Vietnamese American community in San Jose and the surrounding Silicon Valley area in California. It was published weekly by the San Jose Mercury News from 1999 to 2005; it also published daily for a time. It was the first Vietnamese-language newspaper published by an English-language daily, as well as the first non-Hispanic ethnic newspaper published by a major American company. Along with the Spanish-language Nuevo Mundo, it was one of two non-English weekly newspapers published by the Mercury News.