 The former headquarters building for thePress from 1924 to 2019. | |
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | Gannett |
| Publisher | Andy Fisher |
| Editor | Matt Piper |
| Founded | 1907; 118 years ago (1907) (asThe Sheboygan Daily Press) |
| Circulation | 4,600 (as of 2022)[1] |
| Website | sheboyganpress |
The Sheboygan Press is a dailynewspaper based inSheboygan, Wisconsin, United States. It is one of a number of newspapers in the state of Wisconsin owned byGannett, including theMilwaukee Journal Sentinel,Green Bay Press-Gazette andAppleton'sThe Post-Crescent, along with the nearbyHerald Times Reporter ofManitowoc.The Sheboygan Press is primarily distributed inSheboygan County.
The Sheboygan Press also publishes theShoreline Chronicle, a free shopper paper, theCitizen, a weekly free "best-of" edition of thePress,Moxie, which features articles and news aboutsenior citizens, and theToday's Real Estate local realty listings magazine.
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The Sheboygan Press began on December 17, 1907, with the first edition ofThe Sheboygan Daily Press.[2] At the time the area was mainly dominated by the localGerman language newspapers in line with the city's heavyGerman immigrant population, which was the main source of news in the community until afterWorld War I and the rise ofAmericanization, when eventually thePress ended up the lone English-language publication in the community through a line of mergers and foldings of other papers.Daily would be removed from thenameplate as time went on.
Eventually the paper enlisted the financial help ofCharles H. Weisse, aSheboygan Falls businessman and congressman, who hired Charles E. Broughton as editor in 1908. Ownership was shared with the Bowler family, who had invested in the paper in 1912. ThePress grew in circulation over the decades, outgrowing three older buildings already existing downtown before moving into their current purpose-built building at the intersection of Center Avenue and North 7th Street in 1925. Broughton's influence remains in the community, with the north side road along theLake Michigan shoreline named Broughton Drive in his honor as part of campaigns by him and his wife and the paper for beautification of the community.
In 1927, the newspaper founded radio stationWHBL (1330), which remained with the company until the 1950s.
The paper continued to be locally owned by the Bowler and extended Werner families until 1986, whenThe Press was sold toIngersoll Publications.The Press added a Sunday edition on October 18, 1987. The paper was sold to theThomson Corporation in January 1990. In May 1998,The Sheboygan Press' 50-year-old letterpress was retired, which remained in the building until it was disassembled in 2012. Around this same time the publication converted from anafternoon newspaper, which it had been for its entire existence, to morning delivery in line with the decline of afternoon papers in general. Since then, the paper was printed by the facilities ofThe Reporter ofFond du Lac until its closure in 2009, then under contract with theMilwaukee Journal Sentinel from 2009 until September 2013, whenThe Post-Crescent inAppleton began to print all of Gannett's northeastern Wisconsin publications. Upon theJournal Sentinel becoming a part of Gannett in April 2016, thePress and its publications returned to being printed there; all Gannett newspapers in the eastern part of the state began to be printed from Milwaukee in April 2018 with the closing of the Appleton facility.[3] That facility itself was closed in 2022, and Gannett's Wisconsin publications are now printed out of thePeoria Journal-Star facility inPeoria, Illinois.
Gannett purchasedThe Sheboygan Press in August 2000 as part of its purchase of the Thomson newspaper assets, making it part of their network of newspapers in the northeastern and north-central parts of Wisconsin, with collaborative publications and efforts between the publications occurring often. The newspaper's website, which began as a bare-bones effort in 1998, eventually took on most of the features found on most Gannett newspaper sites. The company's main small-market "eight free articles per month" subscription model took effect on thePress's website on June 26, 2012.
Gannett placed thePress building on the market in May 2013, citing that the newspaper's current operations only take up an eighth of the building's existing square footage.[4] In the summer of 2019, the paper moved out of the building to offices based out of theU.S. Bank building across the street, and thePress building was remodeled to serve as apartments. In 2023 the paper moved to even smaller facilities out ofLakeland University's "Jake's" facilities, which were the former offices of Jacobson/Rost.[5]
In March 2024, Gannett announced the end of carrier delivery for most of its newspapers, and thePress is now delivered to subscribers fully by mail.[6]
