 | |
| Type | Dailynewspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | USA Today Co. |
| Editor | Ray Rivera |
| Founded | 1889; 137 years ago (1889) |
| Headquarters | Oklahoma City, Oklahoma |
| Circulation |
|
| OCLC number | 53300931 |
| Website | www |
The Oklahoman is the largest dailynewspaper inOklahoma, United States, and is the only regional daily that covers theGreater Oklahoma City area.[2] The Alliance for Audited Media (formerly Audit Bureau Circulation) lists it as the 59th largest U.S. newspaper in circulation.[3]
The Oklahoman has been published byGannett (formerly known as GateHouse Media) owned byFortress Investment Group and its investorSoftbank since October 1, 2018. On November 11, 2019, GateHouse Media andGannett announced GateHouse Media would be acquiring Gannett and taking the Gannett name.[4] The acquisition of Gannett was finalized on November 19, 2019.[2][3]
Copies are sold for $2 daily or $4 Sundays/Thanksgiving Day; prices are higher outsideOklahoma County and adjacent counties.
The Daily Oklahoman newspaper was founded in 1894 bySamuel W. Small. Small eventually lost the paper and it was owned by a bank who leased the paper toCharles F. Barrett. R. Q. Blakeney would also run the paper before it was bought byRoy E. Stafford and W. T. Parker in 1900. The paper was taken over in 1903 byEdward K. Gaylord. Gaylord would run the paper for 71 years, and upon his death, the paper remained under the Gaylord family.[5]
It was announced on September 15, 2011, that all Oklahoma Publishing Company (OPUBCO) assets, includingThe Oklahoman, would be sold toDenver-based businessmanPhilip Anschutz and hisAnschutz Corporation.[6] The sale of OPUBCO to Philip Anschutz closed in October 2011, and the Oklahoma Publishing Company remained independent in operation. Other Anschutz-owned newspapers includeThe Gazette ofColorado Springs and theWashington Examiner.
In 2018, Anschutz sold The Oklahoman Media Company portion of OPUBCO toGateHouse Media for $12.5 million.[7] which includedThe Oklahoman, NewsOK.com, BigWing and The Oklahoman Direct, marking the first time in the newspaper's history that it would be owned by a publicly traded company.[8]
On November 11, 2019, GateHouse Media andGannett announced GateHouse Media would be acquiring Gannett and taking the Gannett name. The Gannett corporate merger/acquisition closed on November 19, 2019.[9] The November 20, 2019 (Volume 129,323) issue ofThe Oklahoman was the first to show Gannett as the copyright owner, reflecting the rebranding of GateHouse Media to Gannett.
The Oklahoman's offices are located at 100 W. Main in the Century Center office building, connected to the Sheraton Hotel, in downtown Oklahoma City. In 2021,The Oklahoman's staff vacated the newsroom for renovations afterKWTV-DT News9 took over the space asGriffin Communications, purchased the building.[10]The Oklahoman rented part of the space from the new owners.
TheOklahoma Publishing Company (OPUBCO) which ownedThe Oklahoman until 2018, was headquartered at N.W. 4th Street and Broadway in downtown Oklahoma City until 1991, when it moved to a 12-story tower at Broadway Extension and Britton Road in the northern part of the city.[11] That building was sold toAmerican Fidelity Assurance in 2012. Office space was then leased back to OPUBCO until plans were finalized for the company to move its headquarters.
After a 23-year absence from downtown Oklahoma City,The Oklahoman staff (and most OPUBCO employees) moved to the office's current location in early 2015. In 2016, printing and production at the facility at Broadway Extension and Britton Road was shifted toThe Tulsa World and theOklahoman facility closed. As part of the closure, 130 employees were laid off, and pre-production and layout services were sourced to the GateHouse Media-owned Center for News and Design in Austin, Texas.[12][13] The former production plant at Broadway Extension and Britton Road was razed by the site's new owner, American Fidelity Assurance, and as of 2021, new construction and development was taking place in the area.
Founded in 1889 inOklahoma City bySam Small,The Daily Oklahoman was taken over in 1903 by The Oklahoma Publishing Company (OPUBCO), controlled byEdward K. Gaylord, also known as E. K. Gaylord. In 1916, OPUBCO purchased the failingOklahoma Times and operated it as an evening newspaper for the next 68 years.[14]
In 1928, E. K. Gaylord bought Oklahoma's first radio station,WKY. More than 20 years later, he signed on Oklahoma's first television station, WKY-TV (nowKFOR-TV). The two stations would be the anchors of a broadcasting empire that, at its height, included six television stations and five radio stations. Nearly all of the Gaylord broadcasting interests would be sold off by 1996, thoughThe Oklahoman held onto WKY radio until 2002.[15]
E. K. Gaylord died at the age of 101, having controlled the newspaper for the previous 71 years. Management of the newspaper passed to his son,Edward L. Gaylord, who managed the newspaper from 1974 to 2003.Christy Gaylord Everest, daughter of Edward L. Gaylord and granddaughter of E. K. Gaylord, was the company's chairwoman and CEO until 2011. Christy Everest was assisted by her sister Louise Gaylord Bennett until the sale of the company in 2011 to Philip Anschutz.
In October 2003,The Daily Oklahoman was renamedThe Oklahoman with OPUBCO and future owner GateHouse Media officially retaining the registered trademarks ofThe Daily Oklahoman,The Sunday Oklahoman, andThe Oklahoma City Times to this day.[16]
In November 2008,The Oklahoman announced that it was reducing its circulation area to cover approximately the western two-thirds of the state, rather than statewide. This shift halted delivery in Tulsa, which reduced the paper's circulation by about 7,000 homes.[17][18]
In January 2009,The Oklahoman and theTulsa World announced a content-sharing agreement in which each paper would carry some content created by the other; the papers also said they would "focus on reducing some areas of duplication, such as sending reporters from bothThe Oklahoman and theWorld to cover routine news events."[19]
In 2010,The Oklahoman introduced the first iPad app for a newspaper/multimedia company of its size in the United States.[20][21]
In 2018, publisher Chris Reen was replaced by interim publisher Jim Hopson.[22] Later that year, editor Kelly Dyer Fry was announced to replace Hopson as publisher. She retained her roles as editor and vice president of news. Dyer Fry retired in November 2020,[23] and in 2021, Ray Rivera was named the new executive editor ofThe Oklahoman.[24] He also oversees Gannett's Sunbelt region, which encompasses some 42 daily and weekly newspapers in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado.
In March 2022,The Oklahoman moved to a six day printing schedule, eliminating its printed Saturday edition.[25]
A 1998American Journalism Review survey acknowledgedThe Oklahoman's positive contributions as a corporate citizen of Oklahoma, but characterized the paper as suffering from understaffing, uninspired content, and political bias.[26] In 1999, theColumbia Journalism Review published an article callingThe Oklahoman the "Worst Newspaper in America"; theCJR cited the paper's conformance to theright-wing political views of the Gaylord family, alleged racist hiring practices, and high costs of ads.[27] In more recent years OPUBCO Communications Group has won a number of awards for innovations, newspaper redesign, First Amendment coverage, sports coverage, breaking news and in-depth multimedia projects.[28]
On May 1, 2014, the sports section ran the headline "Mr. Unreliable" in reference toKevin Durant's performance against theMemphis Grizzlies during the 2014 NBA Playoffs. The headline drew national criticism. Sports Director Mike Sherman later issued an apology.[29]
On June 3, 2020, the editorial board published an opinion piece about theGeorge Floyd protests with the word "thuggish" in the headline. After considerable backlash, the editorial board issued an apology.[30]
The last edition of the eveningOklahoma City Times was published on Feb. 29, 1984. It was folded intoThe Daily Oklahoman beginning with the March 1, 1984 issue.[31]
Look At OKC was launched in 2006 as a weekly alt magazine to compete with theOklahoma Gazette. It was distributed in free racks throughout the Oklahoma City metro area until it was quietly discontinued, with the final issue being published on June 28, 2018.[32]
In December 2017,The Oklahoman launched a premium quarterly magazine titledThe OK (pronounced 'oak'). This magazine was bundled with Sunday editions ofThe Oklahoman, as well as distributed via newsstands. Each issue would cover a different topic including food, travel, or health, with the final issue of the year being a photography-centric issue. It appearsThe OK was discontinued in late 2018, with the final issue being released that December.[33]
NewsOK was originally launched on August 19, 2001, as a joint venture betweenKWTV-DT andThe Oklahoman; however, OPUBCO would obtain full control of NewsOK in 2008. NewsOK would continue to serve as OPUBCO's online news brand, and the "OK' branding would be expanded to other online properties including HomesOK, CarsOK, and JobsOK. However, due to market confusion and a desire to have a unified brand across print and digital media,The Oklahoman announced it would retire the NewsOK brand and redirect all NewsOK.com URLs to Oklahoman.com on May 22, 2019.[34] As of June 9, 2020, over one year after the brand was retired, the NewsOK brand could still be seen at Oklahoman.com, including as the site's favicon and branding within several sections of the website, including Autos, BrandInsight, Homes, Obituaries, Local A&E, Parties Extra, Videos, Shop, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Use.
In November 2019, while attempting to merge the @NewsOK and @TheOklahoman Twitter handles,The Oklahoman lost control of both handles to an unknown third party. This forced the newspaper to begin using @TheOklahoman_ as its official Twitter handle.[35]
Circulation stood at 25,304 daily subscribers, according to a 2022 annual report published by Gannet.[1] In 2018,The Oklahoman reported an average paid circulation of 92,073, with digital subscriptions making up 20,409 of that number, according to anOklahoman article published December 27, 2018.[36]
In 1939, Charles George Werner, a rookie political cartoonist at the newspaper, won thePulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. The winning cartoon, "Nomination for 1938", depicted theNobel Peace Prize resting on a grave marked "Czechoslovakia 1919–1938". Published on October 6, 1938, the cartoon bit at the recently concludedMunich Agreement, which transferred theSudetenland (a strategically important part of Czechoslovakia) toNazi Germany.[37]
Another notable cartoonist for the paper wasJim Lange, who worked for the paper for 58 years and produced over 19,000 cartoons.[38]
