History
The Griffin News was founded in 1871 as a daily publishing each weekday except Monday with a weekly on Friday. [3] Douglas Glessner, originally of Delaware, Ohio, [4] was both editor and publisher. [5] After a merger with The Sun in 1889 it was published under the name The Griffin Daily News and Sun until 1925 when it became the Griffin Daily News. [6]
Under Glessner's editorship the paper published racially inflammatory material and took a pro-lynching stance. According to historian Donald G. Matthews, it "pilloried" the Governor for calling for the prosecution of those responsible for lynching Dr. W. L. Ryder, a white man lynched in 1897. [7] The paper is seen by historian Edwin T. Arnold as a provocateur in events surrounding the all-black regiment the "Tenth Immunes", a Buffalo Soldier regiment, as they passed through Griffin, with much of that paper's coverage setting the national tone of coverage for those events. [8] When Sam Hose was lynched and burned alive in a nearby Coweta County, the paper ran the headline "The Hose Will Not Put Out This Fire". [9]
At the time of Glessner's sudden death in 1910 due to neprhitis, the paper was considered one of the "leading Democratic newspapers of middle Georgia." [10]
In 1924 the paper was purchased by Judge C. C. Givens to be run by two of his sons. [11] It was bought the subsequent year by Quimby Melton, a former manager for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. It stayed in the Melton family until its sale to Thomson Newspapers in 1982. [12] In the Melton era, the paper's circulation rose from a readership of 6,000 in 1950 to 13,500 in 1980. [13] In 1997 it was bought by the Paxton Media Group. [14]