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| Type | Dailynewspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner(s) | Gannett |
| Editor | Jill Nevels |
| Founded | 1850 (175 years ago) (1850) (as theDaily Morning News) |
| Headquarters | 1375 Chatham Parkway Savannah,GA 31405 United States |
| Circulation | 16,959 Daily 19,284 Sunday (as of 2018)[1] |
| ISSN | 1047-028X |
| OCLC number | 51656980 |
| Website | savannahnow |
TheSavannah Morning News is a dailynewspaper inSavannah, Georgia. It is published byGannett. The motto of the paper is "Light of the Coastal Empire and Lowcountry". The paper serves Savannah, itsmetropolitan area, and parts ofSouth Carolina.
William Tappan Thompson, author of theMajor Jones series of humorous stories, along with John McKinney Cooper as publisher and owner, founded the paper on January 15, 1850 as theDaily Morning News. At the end of theCivil War in 1865, John Cooper was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson allowing him to retain ownership of the paper. Its name was changed to theDaily News and Herald, though Thompson remained as editor. Thompson left the paper in 1867 to travel in Europe. In 1868, Thompson returned and the paper was renamed again toThe Savannah Daily Morning News for one edition, then changed to the current name the following day. In 1870,Joel Chandler Harris, who later went on to write the Uncle Remus tales, became an assistant editor. As assistant editor, Harris launched a successful campaign to outlawdueling, which was still popular in Savannah in the mid-19th century.[citation needed]
BankerMills B. Lane, Jr. and publisherAlvah H. Chapman bought theMorning News and theSavannah Evening Press in 1957 and combined some operations as the Savannah News-Press Inc. The papers were again sold in 1960 to William Shivers Morris Jr., owner of theAugusta Chronicle. In 1969, the staffs of theSavannah Evening Press and theSavannah Morning News merged and in 1972 a combined Sunday edition called theSavannah News-Press was published. As evening newspapers were becoming less profitable due to competition by evening news programs on television, theEvening Press was cancelled, running its last issue on October 31, 1996. This left theMorning News as the only major daily newspaper of Savannah.[2]
In 2017,Morris Communications sold its newspapers toGateHouse Media.[3]
The reported numbers for theSavannah Morning News' circulation as of the six months ended September 30, 2009, were 39,656 daily and 52,493 on Sundays.[4] In June 2005, the daily circulation was reported at 53,825,[5] a 26.3% drop. As of July 2013, the newspaper's primary website, savannahnow.com, remained the most-viewed local news source in the Savannah metropolitan area, with an estimated 75,000 unique visitors monthly and roughly 7 million page views monthly, according to Quantcast.[6]
In March 2013, theSavannah Morning News expanded its arts and entertainment section "Do" into a free standalonealt-weekly distributed at roughly 200 newsstands acrossChatham County and through a new website and mobile app.[7] In April 2013, the newspaper launched a new company called Main Street Digital.[citation needed]
Subsidiaries includeBryan County Now andEffingham Now.