TheTimes Herald-Record, often referred to asThe Record orMiddletown Record[citation needed] in its coverage area, is an American dailynewspaper published inMiddletown,New York, covering the northwest suburbs ofNew York City. It coversOrange,Sullivan andUlster counties in New York. It was published in atabloid format until March 1, 2022, when it began being published like most other newspapers, in abroadsheet format.The newspaper left its long-time main office in Middletown in 2021 and moved into a small office nearby in the Town of Wallkill. The newsroom had 120 full-time equivalent employees in the 1990s, but as of July 2023 it had one news reporter and one sports reporter.
It came into being in the late 1950s when Middletown's two papers merged. It is owned byGannett.
A newspaper has been in existence in some form in the city of Middletown since 1851. TheTimes Herald was the result of a 1927 merger of theTimes-Press, a merger of the old Middletown(Whig) Press of the 1850s and theDaily Times, founded in 1891, and theDaily Herald, founded in 1918, but also going back to the 1850s. TheTimes Herald had the Middletown market to itself from 1927 until 1956, when Jacob M. Kaplan started publishing theMiddletown Daily Record, the first daily U.S. newspaper to usecold type, from a garage on North Street. The new paper grew to a dailycirculation of 19,000 within three years but lost a lot of money in the process.[2]
Times Herald-Record′s former main offices in Middletown
In November 1959, James H. Ottaway Sr., the founder of Ottaway Newspapers Inc.,[3] bought theTimes-Herald and thePort Jervis Union-Gazette fromRalph Ingersoll, who had owned the papers since 1951.The Gazette, serving Port Jervis and surrounding communities, still exists as a weekly newspaper published by theTimes Herald-Record. A few months later, in April 1960, Kaplan sold hisDaily Record to Ottaway.[2] Ottaway tried to convert the paper to abroadsheet, but restored the original format after three months. In October 1960 the two papers were merged into their current form.The Sunday Record began in 1969, shortly after Ottaway itself was acquired by Dow Jones. In 2007, when News Corp. bought Dow Jones, the newspaper again changed hands.
The Record was often an innovator in newspaper publishing and was one of the first to print color. The newspaper underwent a significant redesign and page cut-down in 2007. At that time,The Sunday Record was given the standardTimes Herald-Record nameplate. In 2008, the newspaper's Web site, recordonline.com, underwent a complementary redesign. The in-print and online redesigns were launched to coincide with bolstered local and business news coverage.
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.[4] GateHouse in turn filed prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 27, 2013, to restructure its debt obligations in order to accommodate the acquisition.[5]
In February 2024, the newspaper announced it will switch from carrier to postal delivery.[6]
Avrom "Al" Romm (1926–1999), named city editor of theDaily Record in 1957, became theTimes Herald-Record firstmanaging editor after the merge in 1960, a position he held until he was named editorial page editor in 1976. His youngest son is climate expertJoseph J. Romm.[7]
Manny Fuchs (1924–2005) joined theDaily Record in 1957 and became chief photographer in 1960.[8] He was a concentration camp survivor who became a photojournalist.[9] Before and during his stint at theRecord, he photographedPicasso,Marilyn Monroe,Tennessee Williams, andBen Hecht, among others. In 1966, he went to Vietnam to take pictures of hometown soldiers in the war zone. In addition to his photojournalism assignments, he was a patient teacher[10] but hard taskmaster. After retiring, he and his wife returned to her native France and lived in Paris, but came back to Middletown where they lived until his death in 2005.
Hunter S. Thompson, the future creator ofgonzo journalism was fired by Editor A.N. Romm after "kicking open the office candy machine with his bare feet - again."[2]
Mike Levine (1952–2007), began as a columnist in 1983, working his way up to executive editor in 1999. After a year's hiatus in 2001, he became executive editor in 2002.[11] The Mike Levine Journalism Education Fund was founded after his death, and sponsors an annual training for aspiring writers at The Mike Levine Workshop.[12] The workshop is led each year by prominent writers.[13] In addition, an annual Mike Levine Column Read-a-Thon is held which raises money for the Education Fund.[14] Levine is the first writer in the history ofThe Record for whom every article he had written is available online by archive[15] A clip of Levine addressing his community is on YouTube.[16]
