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 The February 29, 2012 front page of The Charleston Gazette | |
| Type | Semi-Dailynewspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner(s) | HD Media |
| President | Doug Skaff[1] |
| Editor | Lee Wolverton[2] |
| Founded | 1873 |
| Headquarters | 1001 Virginia St. E. Charleston,WV 25301 United States |
| Circulation | 40,671 Daily 68,940 Sunday (as of 2009)[3] |
| Website | wvgazettemail.com |
TheCharleston Gazette-Mail is a non-daily morningnewspaper inCharleston, West Virginia. It is the product of a July 2015 merger betweenThe Charleston Gazette and theCharleston Daily Mail. It is one of nine papers owned byHD Media. It publishes Tuesday-Saturday, with the Saturday paper being dated "Weekend", with updates on its website on Sundays and Mondays.
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TheGazette traces its roots to 1873. At the time, it was a weekly newspaper known as theKanawha Chronicle. It was later renamedThe Kanawha Gazette and theDaily Gazette—before its name was officially changed toThe Charleston Gazette in 1907.[4]
In 1912 it came under the control of the Chilton family, who ran it until its bankruptcy in 2018.William E. Chilton, a U.S. senator, was publisher ofThe Gazette, as were his son, William E. Chilton II, and grandson, W. E. "Ned" Chilton III, Yale graduate and classmate/protégé of conservative columnistWilliam F. Buckley, Jr. Ironically, the paper's opinion page, usually on the left, carried Buckley's column until Buckley's death.[citation needed] In 1918 a fire destroyed theGazette building at 909 Virginia St. The newspaper was moved to 227 Hale St., where it remained for 42 years.[citation needed]
Ned Chilton used to claim that the job of a newspaper was to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." The newspaper's liberal reputation was enhanced by principal editorial writer and columnist L. T. Anderson, associate editor and two-time runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize. Anderson later moved to the rivalDaily Mail as a columnist after he was passed over for an editorial position at theGazette, and often used hisDaily Mail column to snipe at his former employer.[citation needed]
TheDaily Mail was founded in 1914 by former Alaska GovernorWalter Eli Clark and remained the property of his heirs until 1987. Governor Clark described the newspaper as an "independent Republican" publication. In 1987, the Clark heirs sold the paper to the Toronto-basedThomson Newspapers. The new owners moderated the political views of the paper to some degree. In 1998, Thomson sold the Daily Mail to the Denver-basedMediaNews Group. Editorial writer Jack Maurice won the Pulitzer Prize for editorials in 1975 for a series of editorials he wrote the year before amid a battle over textbooks in Kanawha County. It was the first Pulitzer won by a newspaper in West Virginia.[citation needed]
The newspaper published in the afternoons, Monday-Saturday, with a Sunday morning edition, until 1961; Monday - Saturday afternoons from 1961-2005, Monday - Friday afternoons from 2005-2009, and Monday - Friday mornings from 2009-2015.[citation needed]
Under aJoint Operating Agreement the two newspapers merged their production and distribution from 1961, while maintaining completely separate editorial operations. A combinedSunday Gazette-Mail (distinct from the 2015 fully-merged newspaper) was published on Sundays from 1961 to 1991, produced by both papers' staffs, and from 1991 to 2015, produced by theGazette staff alone.[citation needed]
A similar combinedSaturday Gazette-Mail was published on Saturdays from 2005 to 2015. It was likewise produced by theGazette staff, but featured two editorial pages, one produced by each paper's staff.[citation needed]
In 2004, theGazette purchased theDaily Mail. In May 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit, alleging that the Daily Mail had been operated in an uncompetitive manner. The newspaper settled without trial and agreed a federal injunction prohibiting it from shutting down theDaily Mail until July 20, 2015. The previous owner was to be paid a fee to produce the paper during that era, and controlled its editorial content.[citation needed]
On July 20, 2015, owners merged theDaily Mail andGazette without prior notice and renamed the paper theCharleston Gazette-Mail. The entire staff of both papers was given two-weeks notice and told to "reapply" for jobs at the new paper. The combined paper included both formerGazette andDaily Mail staff members, and included two separate editorial pages that were intended to represent theDaily Mail's more conservative views, andGazette's more liberal views, on current topics.[citation needed]
On July 23, 2015, thePension Benefit Guaranty Corporation filed a $1.3 millionlien on the company because of "years of unpaid pension deposits".[5]
On October 6, 2015, the previous owner of theDaily Mail, theMediaNews Group, filed suit in theDelaware Court of Chancery against theGazette's owners. They alleged that:
The matter was taken toarbitration and theGazette was found liable on all counts. A judgment was awarded for almost $4,000,000.[7] The Gazette appealed to theUnited States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia but was again found liable on all counts.[8]
In October 2017, the newspaper ceased physical printing of a Monday edition, substituting a "virtual edition" and website updates.[9]
In January 2018, the company settled for an undisclosed sum with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Trust, filed under theWARN Act notice that up to 206 of its 209 remaining employees "might" be subject to termination and then filed forbankruptcy.[10] This set up a 60-day period during which bids for the paper can be made, with the opening high bid coming fromOgden Newspapers, which publishes five other daily newspapers in the state.[11] However, local politician Doug Reynolds, owner of theHuntington Herald-Dispatch, together with investors he declined to name, entered a higher bid and Ogden withdrew.[12]
On March 9, 2018, bankruptcy judge Frank Volk approved sale ofGazette-Mail toHD Media. The company having met the conditions set forth in a February order, including bidding at least $500,000 more thanOgden Newspapers' initial bid of $10,911,000. The final sale price was $11,487,243. The previous day, Ogden Newspapers announced that they no longer intended to pursue purchase, leaving HD Media as the highest bidder.[13]
On July 16, 2023, the newspaper announced the elimination of its Sunday print edition. Instead, a combined weekend edition would be sent out on Saturday starting Aug. 5.[14][15]
Eric Eyre, aGazette-Mail reporter, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for his documentation of the 780 million prescription painkillers that multibillion-dollar drug companies poured into small West Virginia towns via pharmacies.[citation needed]
Ken Ward Jr., aGazette-Mail reporter, received a 2018 fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation (commonly referred to as a "genius grant"). Ward also was one of the first reporters chosen for ProPublica's Local Reporting Network, which began in 2018.[citation needed]
The newspaper has won the top award for general editorial excellence from the West Virginia Press Association each year since theGazette andDaily Mail were combined.[citation needed]
Despite editorial support for manylabor unions in other industries, in 1972, the company employed strike breakers to eliminate unions of its own. The company remains non-union.[citation needed]
Three days after running an editorial relative to a pension dispute betweenPatriot Coal and some of its former workers, thePension Benefit Guaranty Corporation filed a $1.3 millionlien on the company because of "years of unpaid pension deposits".[citation needed]
On February 4, 2021, HD Media, the owner of theGazette, filed an antitrust lawsuit againstGoogle andFacebook, Inc., claiming that the companies have unlawfully manipulated the digital advertising market at the expense of the newspaper. According toThe Wall Street Journal, while both Facebook and Google have faced antitrust scrutiny from the federal government, the lawsuit was thefirst of its kind to be filed by an individual news outlet.[16] Later in the year, it was reported byAxios that over 200 newspapers across the United States have filed similar lawsuits against Facebook and Google under similar grounds.[17]
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