| The Newspaper of Silicon Valley[1] | |
 The March 14, 2023, front page ofThe Mercury News | |
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | Digital First Media (Alden Global Capital) |
| Founder | John C. Emerson et al.[2] |
| Publisher | Sharon Ryan[3] |
| Editor | Sarah Dussault[3] |
| Managing editor |
|
| News editor | Emily DeRuy |
| Opinion editor | Max Taves |
| Sports editor | Michael Nowels |
| Photo editor | Laura Oda |
| Founded | June 20, 1851; 174 years ago (1851-06-20) (asSan Jose Weekly Visitor) |
| Language | English |
| Headquarters | 75 E. Santa Clara Street, Suite 1100 San Jose, California 95113 U.S.[4] |
| Circulation | 93,302 Daily 150,686 Sunday (as of 2022)[5] |
| ISSN | 0747-2099 |
| OCLC number | 145122249 |
| Website | mercurynews |
The Mercury News (formerlySan Jose Mercury News; often locally known asThe Merc) is a morningdaily newspaper published inSan Jose, California, in theSan Francisco Bay Area. It is published by theBay Area News Group, a subsidiary ofMedia News Group which in turn is controlled byAlden Global Capital, avulture fund.[6][7] As of March 2013[update], it was thefifth largest daily newspaper in the United States, with a daily circulation of 611,194.[8][9] In 2018, the paper had a circulation of 324,500 daily and 415,200 on Sundays.[10] The Bay Area News Group no longer reports circulation, but rather "readership". As of 2021[update], readership of 312,700 adults daily was reported.[11]
First published in 1851, theMercury News is the last remaining English-language daily newspaper covering theSanta Clara Valley in Northern California. It became theMercury News in 1983 after a series of mergers. During much of the 20th century, it was owned byKnight Ridder. Because of its location inSilicon Valley, theMercury News has covered many of the key events in the history of information technology and computing, and was a pioneer in delivering news online.[12] It was the first American newspaper to publish in three languages (English, Spanish, and Vietnamese).[13]
The paper's name derives from theSan Jose Mercury andSan Jose News, two daily newspapers that merged to form theMercury News.
TheSan Jose Mercury's name was a play on words. The word "mercury" was often found in newspaper titles, but here it also alluded to the importance of themercury industry during theCalifornia Gold Rush (1848-55) when the paper was first created (1851). At the time, the nearbyNew Almaden mine (nowAlmaden Quicksilver County Park) was North America's largest producer of mercury, which was needed forhydraulic gold mining. In addition,Mercury is the Roman messenger god as well as the god of commerce and thieves—he is known for his swiftness—sothe nameMercury is commonly used for newspapers without the quicksilver association.[2]
The paper's local coverage and circulation is concentrated inSanta Clara County andSan Mateo County. With theMercury News,East Bay Times,Marin Independent Journal, andSilicon Valley Community Newspapers, theBay Area News Group covers much of theSan Francisco Bay Area with the notable exception ofSan Francisco itself.[6]
TheMercury News's predecessor, theWeekly Visitor, began as aWhig paper in the early 1850s but quickly switched its affiliation to theDemocratic Party.[14] The paper remained a conservative voice through the mid 20th century, when it supported pro-growth city leaders and pursued a staunchly pro-growth, anti-union agenda.[12] It became considerably more moderate in the 1970s, reflecting new ownership and changes to the local political landscape.[15] It endorsedJohn B. Anderson for president in 1980 and endorsed Democratic presidential candidates in every election from1992 through 2016.[16]
The newspaper now known as theMercury News began in 1851 or 1852.[note 1] California legislators had just moved the state capital from San Jose toVallejo, leading to the failure of San Jose's first two newspapers, theArgus andState Journal. A group of three businessmen led by John C. Emerson bought the papers' presses to found theSan Jose Weekly Visitor.[2] TheWeekly Visitor began as aWhig paper but quickly switched its affiliation to theDemocratic Party. It was renamed theSanta Clara Register in 1852. The following year,Francis B. Murdoch took over the paper, merging it into theSan Jose Telegraph.[14][18][19] W. A. Slocum assumed control of theTelegraph in 1860 and merged it with theSan Jose Mercury orWeekly Mercury to become theTelegraph and Mercury. William N. Slocum soon droppedTelegraph from the name.[20][21] By this point, theMercury was one of two newspapers publishing in San Jose.[14]
James Jerome Owen – aforty-niner and former RepublicanNew York assemblyman – became theMercury's publisher in the spring of 1861, later acquiring a controlling interest in the paper along with a partner, Benjamin H. Cottle.[22][14][23] The paper published daily as theSan Jose Daily Mercury for three months in the fall of 1861, then from August 1869 to April 1870 with the addition of J. J. Conmy as partner[23][24] and again from March 11, 1872, after the purchase of theDaily Guide.[22] In 1878, Owen formed theMercury Printing and Publishing Company.[25]
In 1881, Owen proposed to light San Jose with amoonlight tower. TheSan Jose electric light tower was dedicated that year. TheMercury boasted that San Jose was the first town west of theRocky Mountains lighted by electricity.[26]
TheMercury merged with the Times Publishing Company, which was owned byCharles M. Shortridge, in 1884.[27][28][29] TheDaily Morning Times andDaily Mercury briefly became theTimes-Mercury, while theWeekly Times andWeekly Mercury briefly become theTimes-Weekly Mercury.[30] In 1885, both publications adopted theSan Jose Mercury name.[31] That year, Owen sold his interest in the paper and moved to San Francisco.[22]
In late 1900,Everis A. Hayes and his brother Jay purchased theMercury. In August 1901, they purchased theSan Jose Daily Herald, an evening paper, and formed the Mercury Herald Company.[32] In 1913, the two papers were consolidated into a single morning paper, theSan Jose Mercury Herald.[33]
In 1942, the Mercury Herald Company purchased theSan Jose News (which was founded in 1851) but continued to publish both papers, theMercury Herald in the morning and theNews in the evening, with a combined Sunday edition called theMercury Herald News.[33] TheHerald name was dropped in 1950.[34]
Herman Ridder's Northwest Publications (later Ridder Publications) purchased theMercury andNews in 1952.[35] During the mid 20th century, the papers took largely conservative, pro-growth positions. Publisher Joe Ridder was a vocal proponent of San Jose City ManagerA. P. Hamann's development agenda, which emphasizedurban sprawl within an ever-expanding city limits. Ridder counted on increasing population to lead to increased newspaper subscriptions and advertising sales. The paper supported a series ofgeneral obligation bonds worth $134 million (equivalent to $877 million in 2024), most of it spent on capital improvements that benefited real estate developers. It also supported a revision to the city charter that introduced adirect mayoral elections and abolished thevote of confidence for city manager.[36] By 1967, theMercury had risen to rank among the top six largest morning newspapers in the country by circulation, boosted by unabated growth into the suburbs, while theNews ran the most advertising of any evening newspaper in the country.[12]
In February 1967, theMercury andNews moved from a cramped former grocery store in downtown San Jose to a 36-acre (15 ha) campus in suburban North San Jose. A 185,000-square-foot (17,200 m2) main building could contain more presses to serve a booming population. The newly built complex cost $1 million (equivalent to $7.16 million in 2024) and was called the largest one-story newspaper plant in the world. Civic leaders criticized the move as emblematic of theurban decay that downtown San Jose was experiencing.[37][4][38]
In 1974, Ridder merged with Knight Newspapers to formKnight Ridder. Joe Ridder was forced to retire in 1977. His nephew, P. Anthony "Tony" Ridder, succeeded him as publisher. Tony Ridder placed an emphasis on improving the papers' reportage, to better reflect Knight's reputation for investigative journalism.[12]
After the merger, the papers moderated their formerly staunch pro-growth agenda, and coverage of local issues became more balanced. The editorial board expressed only minimal opposition to a 1978 measure that abolishedat-large city council elections, seen as favorable to deep-pocketed developers, in favor of council districts.[15] It supported the desegregation ofSan Jose Unified School District and in 1978 argued againstProposition 13. In the 1980s, Ridder supported MayorTom McEnery's efforts to redevelop the downtown area, including the construction ofSan Jose Arena andThe Tech Museum of Innovation.[12][39]
In 1983, theMercury andNews merged into a single seven-day paper, theSan Jose Mercury News, with separate morning and afternoon editions.[40] The afternoon edition was discontinued in 1995, leaving only the morning edition.[12]
In the 1980s and 1990s, theMercury News publishedWest magazine as a Sunday insert.
In the 1990s, theMercury News expanded its coverage of the area's ethnic communities, to national acclaim,[41] hiring Vietnamese-speaking reporters for the first time.[12] In 1994, it became the first of two American dailies to open aforeign bureau in Vietnam after theVietnam War.[42][43][44][45] Aforeign correspondent stationed at theHanoi bureau held an annualtown hall meeting with the Vietnamese-American community in San Jose. Initially, community members staged protests accusing the paper of siding with the Communist government in Vietnam by opening the bureau.[46]
TheMercury News launched the free, Spanish-language weeklyNuevo Mundo (New World) in 1996[47] and the free, Vietnamese-language weeklyViet Mercury in 1999.[48]Viet Mercury was the first Vietnamese-language newspaper published by an English-language daily.[43] It competed against a crowded field of 14 Vietnamese-ownedcommunity newspapers, including four dailies.[49]
TheMercury News benefited from its status as the major daily newspaper inSilicon Valley during thedot-com bubble. It led the news industry in business coverage of the valley's high-tech industry, attracting readers from around the world.Time called theMercury News the most technologically savvy newspaper in the country.[12] The tech industry's growth fueled growth in the paper'sclassified advertising, particularly for employment listings. For 20 years, theMercury News was one of the country's top newspapers in the amount of advertising it ran.[50]
TheMercury News was one of the first daily newspapers in the United States to have an online presence, and was the first to deliver full content and breaking news online. It launched a service called Mercury Center onAmerica Online in 1993, followed by the country's first news website in 1995 (see§ Online presence). Mercury Center shut down its AOL service in July 1996, leaving only the website.[50][51][52]
At its peak in 2001, theMercury News had 400 employees in its newsroom, 15 bureaus, $288 million in annual revenue, and profit margins above 30%. In 1998, Knight Ridder moved its headquarters fromMiami to theKnight-Ridder Building in San Jose, which was seen as an acknowledgment of the central role that online news would play in the company's future. Mercury Center ended its paywall in May 1998, after posting 1.2 million monthly unique visitors the previous year. By 2000, the paper had a Sunday circulation of 327,000 and $341 million in annual revenue, $118 million of it from job listings.[50] In 2001, circulation rose to 289,413 daily and 332,669 Sundays.[12]
The collapse of the dot-com bubble impacted the classified advertising that sustained the newspaper's business operations. Additionally, newspapers across the industry faced serious competition to their job listings from websites such asMonster.com,CareerBuilder, andCraigslist.[50][12]
Cost-cutting began affecting the initiatives the paper had started in the 1990s. In June 2005, theMercury News closed its Hanoi bureau.[45] On October 21, it also announced the closure ofNuevo Mundo and the sale ofViet Mercury to a group of Vietnamese-American businessmen; however, the deal fell through, andViet Mercury published its final issue on November 11, 2005.
On March 13, 2006,The McClatchy Company purchased Knight Ridder for $4.5 billion. In a surprise move, McClatchy immediately put theMercury News and 11 other newspapers back up for sale.[53][54][12] On April 26,Denver-basedMediaNews Group (now Digital First Media) announced a planned $1 billion purchase of theMercury News, two other California newspapers, and theSt. Paul Pioneer Press, with the three California papers to be added to theCalifornia Newspapers Partnership (CNP).[55][50] However, on June 12, 2006, federal regulators from theU.S. Department of Justice asked for more time to review the purchase, citing possible antitrust concerns over MediaNews' ownership of other newspapers in the region.[56]
Although approval by regulators and completion of MediaNews' acquisition was announced on August 2, 2006, a lawsuit claiming antitrust violations by MediaNews and theHearst Corporation had also been filed in July 2006.[56] The suit, which sought to undo the purchase of both theMercury News and theContra Costa Times, was scheduled to go to trial on April 30, 2007. While extending until that date a preliminary injunction that prevented the collaboration of local distribution and national advertising sales by the two media conglomerates, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston on December 19, 2006, expressed doubt over the legality of the purchase.[57] On April 25, 2007, days before the trial was scheduled to begin, the parties reached a settlement in which MediaNews preserved its acquisitions.[58] TheMercury News andContra Costa Times were placed under CNP's local subsidiary, theBay Area News Group. Meanwhile, layoffs continued at theMercury News. Around December 2016, 101 employees were laid off, including 40 in the newsroom.[50]
In 2013, MediaNews Group and21st Century Media merged to formDigital First Media.[59] In April 2013, MediaNews announced that it would sell theMercury News campus on Ridder Park Drive in North San Jose. County SupervisorDave Cortese approached theMercury News about moving into the former San Jose City Hall on North First Street,[60] but the paper ended up returning downtown. In June 2014, printing and production of theMercury News and other daily newspapers moved to Bay Area News Group'sConcord andHayward facilities. TheMercury News moved into a downtown office building that September.[38] According to the publishers, the Ridder Park Drive facility had become unnecessarily large for the paper, following the departure of printing operations and other staff reductions that had occurred over the years.[37]
On April 5, 2016,Bay Area News Group consolidated theSan Mateo County Times and 14 other titles into theSan Jose Mercury News. The paper's name was shortened toThe Mercury News.[61][62][63][12]
TheMercury News is the largest tenant in the Towers @ 2nd high-rise office complex in downtown San Jose.[64] Business functions occupy the seventh floor of 4 North Second Street, while news staff and executives occupy the eighth floor, for a total of 33,186 square feet (3,083.1 m2).[4] Printing and production of theMercury News take place at the Bay Area News Group's facilities inConcord andHayward in the East Bay.[38]
Originally, theMercury andNews published from various locations in downtown San Jose. From February 1967 to September 2014, the papers were headquartered in a 36-acre (15 ha) campus in suburban North San Jose, abutting the Nimitz Freeway (then State Route 17, nowInterstate 880).[37] The Web staff was originally co-located with the newsroom staff but moved to downtown San Jose in December 1996.[50] Following theMercury News' return to the downtown area, Digital First Media sold the suburban campus toSuper Micro Computer, Inc., which renamed it "Supermicro Green Computing Park".[2]
OlderSan Jose Mercury News newsboxes have black, white, and green stripes, while newerMercury News newsboxes bear the paper's logo in white against a blue background.
TheMercury News operates a paywalled website, which is located at mercurynews.com, sjmercury.com, or sjmn.com. Its SiliconValley.com website focuses on the technology industry inSilicon Valley. It also publishes a morning e-mailnewsletter, Good Morning Silicon Valley, that covers technology news. "Mercury News" and "e-Edition" applications are available forAndroid andiOS devices, as well as for theKindle Fire andBarnes & Noble Nook.[65][66]
TheMercury News was one of the first daily newspapers in the United States to have an online presence and was the first to deliver full content and breaking news online. In 1990, editor Robert Ingle sent a report to Tony Ridder, then the head ofKnight Ridder, on the company's future in electronic media after the failure ofViewtron four years earlier. Ingle proposed aMercury Center online service that would use the newspaper's content to bring togethercommunities of interest.[50] It launched as part ofAmerica Online on May 10, 1993, at AOL keywordMERCURY. It was the second news service on AOL, after theChicago Tribune opened Chicago Online in 1992.[51][52][44]
The paper sentfloppy disks to subscribers for accessing Mercury Center. The service featured a large amount of content for free: the print paper's full content, supplementary material such as documents and audio clips, stock quotes, and about 200 stories that did not make the print edition. Aforum enabled readers to converse with each other and give feedback to reporters. However, the service's most popular content lie behind apaywall: back issues from 1985 onward and a "NewsHound" clipping service were popular with business users.[50][67] Readers could enter alphanumeric codes, which appeared throughout the print paper, to quickly access online versions of articles that did not make print. Examples includedN620 for an article in the news section orB770 for a press release in the business section. The Mercury Center staff comprised both news reporters and business "senders", who postedpress releases online in addition to vetted content.[68]
Initially, the service had difficulty attracting users, prompting the paper to add a telephone and fax hotline, News Call, in November 1993. By early 1994, Mercury Center had added 5,100 subscribers to AOL, representing less than 20% of AOL's 30,000 subscribers in theSan Francisco Bay Area or less than two percent of theMercury News's 282,488 daily subscribers.[68][69]
In December 1994, theMercury News began beta-testing a companion website, Mercury Center Web,[51] which on January 20, 1995, became the country's first news website.[70] Subscribers no longer needed AOL to access theMercury News's online content, and the paper no longer had to share advertising revenue with AOL.[50] The site ran onNetscape's Netsuite Web server, with connectivity provided byNetcom.[69] Access to the site cost $4.95 per month, with a discount for print subscribers. In October 1995, CareerBuilder.com launched as a partnership between theBoston Globe,Chicago Tribune,Los Angeles Times,Mercury News,New York Times, andWashington Post. Mercury Center shut down its AOL service in July 1996, leaving only the website.[50]
In August 1996, theMercury News published "Dark Alliance", a series of investigative articles by reporterGary Webb that claimedCIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking (see§ Controversies). TheMercury News promoted the upcoming series onUsenet newsgroups weeks in advance. Mercury Center published reporting and supporting material online simultaneously with the print edition. The robust online production drew significant national attention to the series. Within days, more than 2,500 websites linked to Mercury Center's "Dark Alliance" section, and the site received 100,000 daily page views over the usual traffic for weeks. Executive editorJerome Ceppos eventually distanced the paper from the series, but it continued to receive attention, especially from online conspiracy theorists.[71]
On October 26, 1999, technology columnistDan Gillmor began writing ablog,eJournal, on theMercury News' SiliconValley.com website. It is believed to have been the first blog by a journalist at a traditional media company.[72][73] In the 2000s, he was joined by columnists-turned-bloggersTim Kawakami and John Paczkowski.
Articles dating back to June 1985 can be found online for free on theMercury News website, with full text available on theNewsLibrary andNewsBank subscription databases.[74] NewsBank also hosts the full text of articles from 1886 to 1922. TheSan José Public Library's website hosts thousands of news clips of articles from 1920 to 1979.[75] Much of Gillmor'seJournal is preserved on the Bayosphere website.[76][73]
The newspaper has earned several awards, including twoPulitzer Prizes, one in 1986 for reporting regarding political corruption in theFerdinand Marcos administration in thePhilippines, and one in 1990 for their comprehensive coverage of the1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Assistant managing editorDavid Yarnold was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2004 for a local corruption investigation.[77] The Mercury News was also named one of the five best-designed newspapers in the world by theSociety for News Design for work done in 2001. In 2007 the newspaper won aMissouri Lifestyle Journalism Award for General Excellence, Class IV.[78]
Various staff writers and designers have received awards for their contributions toWest magazine, a Sunday insert published by theMercury News in the 1980s and 1990s.
TheMercury News website receivedEPpy Awards in 1996, 1999, 2009, 2013, and 2014.[79]
In August 1996, theMercury News published "Dark Alliance", a series of investigative articles by reporterGary Webb. The series claimed that members of the NicaraguanContras, a right wing guerrilla group organized with the help of theCentral Intelligence Agency, had been involved in smuggling cocaine into America to support their struggle, and as a result, had played a major role in creating the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. The series sparked three federal investigations, but other newspapers such as theLos Angeles Times later published articles alleging that the series' claims were overstated. Executive editor Jerry Ceppos, who had approved the series, eventually published a column that suggested shortcomings in the series' reporting, editing, and production, while maintaining the story was correct "on many important points".[80][81] The series was turned into a 1998book by the same name, also by Webb, and an account of the controversy surrounding the series was published asKill the Messenger in 2006. Both were the basis for the 2014 filmKill the Messenger.
The Mercury News publishes the following community weeklies:[84]
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