| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | Gannett |
| Publisher | John Tabor |
| Editor | Howard Altschiller |
| Founded | September 23, 1884 (1884-09-23), asThe Penny Post[1] |
| Headquarters | 111 New Hampshire Avenue, Portsmouth,New Hampshire 03801,United States |
| Circulation | 6,202 (as of 2018)[2] |
| ISSN | 0746-6218 |
| Website | seacoastonline |
The Portsmouth Herald (andSeacoast Weekend) is a six-daydaily newspaper serving greaterPortsmouth, New Hampshire. Its coverage area also includes the municipalities ofGreenland,New Castle,Newington andRye, New Hampshire; andEliot,Kittery,Kittery Point andSouth Berwick, Maine.
Unlike most New England daily newspapers,The Herald's circulation grew in the 2000s. Its editors in 2001 credited the newspaper's resurgence with the introduction of the "Wow! factor"—front-page stories on controversial or sensational topics that appeal to younger readers.[3]
The Portsmouth Herald considers its foundation date to be September 23, 1884, the day that its predecessorThe Penny Post first appeared in Portsmouth.The Penny Post (named for its newsstand price) within two years was claiming to have the largest circulation base inNew England. ThePost adopted the namePortsmouth Herald in mid-1897, and cost 2 cents per issue.[1]
Traced back through the history of its sister papers, however, theHerald has an even longer pedigree. In 1891, F.W. Hartford took overThe Penny Post and initiated a newspaper war with two of the city's longest established papers, theMorning Chronicle (daily since 1852) and the weeklyNew Hampshire Gazette (the state's oldest newspaper, established October 7, 1756). He eventually bought out his rivals, and announced on April 5, 1898, that he had taken control of theChronicle andGazette.[1]
Hartford continued to publish theMorning Chronicle as the morning counterpart to the eveningHerald until his death in 1938; he and his son J.D. Hartford keptThe New Hampshire Gazette in print as the weekend edition of theHerald, partially out of pride in being associated with "the nation's oldest newspaper". Even after theHerald's Sunday paper was renamed in the 1960s, the slogan "Continuing the tradition of theN.H. Gazette" continued to appear on the front page.[1]
Eventually theHerald allowed its claim to theGazette's history fall into disuse, and in 1989, a descendant of theGazette's founder began publishing analternative weekly newspaper under the nameThe New Hampshire Gazette.[4]
The Herald and its sisterweekly newspapers inNew Hampshire andMaine form theSeacoast Media Group, a subsidiary ofLocal Media Group. It was acquired for the Ottaway chain byDow Jones & Company, which formerly owned the chain, December 1, 1997,[5] in a newspaper swap in whichThomson Corporation gainedThe News-Sun ofSun City, Arizona.[6]
News Corporation acquiredThe Herald when it bought former ownerDow Jones & Company forUS$5 billion in late 2007.Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corp., reportedly told investors before the deal that he would be "selling the local newspapers fairly quickly" after the Dow Jones purchase.[7]
On September 4, 2013,News Corp announced that it would sell the Dow Jones Local Media Group to Newcastle Investment Corp.—an affiliate ofFortress Investment Group, for $87 million. The newspapers will be operated byGateHouse Media, a newspaper group owned by Fortress. News Corp. CEO and formerWall Street Journal editorRobert James Thomson indicated that the newspapers were "not strategically consistent with the emerging portfolio" of the company.[8] GateHouse in turn filed prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 27, 2013, to restructure its debt obligations in order to accommodate the acquisition.[9]
During the tail end of Thomson's ownership ofThe Herald, it was seen as corporate and out-of-touch with the local community. Several weekly newspapers sprang up to challenge it in Portsmouth and surrounding towns.[10]
Years before buyingThe Herald, Ottaway started a weekly newspaper, thePortsmouth Press, in 1987. For six years, that paper competed with the daily. Its publisher, John Tabor, eventually became publisher ofThe Herald.[5]
The Herald's strongest daily competitors areFoster's Daily Democrat in nearbyDover, New Hampshire, and the statewideNew Hampshire Union Leader. In the late 1990s, theGeo. J. Foster Company launchedFoster's Sunday Citizen, to compete withHerald Sunday and the state's largest Sunday paper, theNew Hampshire Sunday News. Around the same time,The Herald's Ottaway managers announced they would begin distributingHerald Sunday outside of the daily newspaper's coverage area, into theExeter andHampton areas, where Seacoast Media Group publishes weeklies.[5]
The paper also faces hometown competition from an alternative newsweekly,The New Hampshire Gazette, named after the state's oldest newspaper, which had been absorbed into theHerald in the 1890s.
On October 31, 2010, Seacoast Media Group announced plans to charge online users nearly $69 per year to access the previously free content. The fee took effect November 16, 2010. The print edition is $1.00 a day ($2.00 on Seacoast Weekend).
