The News-Press history

Ottmar Mergenthaler’s introduction of the Linotype machine in 1886—first in the United States, then in Britain and other industrialized countries—allowed existing newspapers to increase substantially their production and circulation.

As his first effort he launched a cheap weekly magazine in 1888, when he was only age 23.

By 1890, some papers boasted circulations in excess of one million copies.

In 1894 Harmsworth bought the Evening News, and by combining his editing style with some of the methods of American yellow journalism, he quadrupled its circulation within a year.

By the time he came to New York City in 1895, however, Hearst was interested in circulation-building sensation at any price, even if it meant dressing up complete fabrications as news.

R. F. Outcault’s the Yellow Kid, first published in William Randolf Hearst’s New York Journal in 1896.

Meanwhile, the equally successful tabloid Daily Sketch had been begun in Manchester in 1909 by Sir Edward Hulton.

The News-Press (and its predecessor, the Fort Myers Press) is up to 2,514,183 pages, from 1911 until this year.

In 1912, a year after his death and 10 years after Pulitzer had begun his educational campaign, classes opened at the Columbia University School of Journalism.

Lord Northcliffe sold the Mirror to his brother Lord Rothermere in 1913.

Additionally, in 1917, the first Pulitzer Prize was awarded for excellence in journalism.

By 1922, Hearst, a ruthless publisher, had created the country’s largest media-holding company.

In 1931 the New York Morning, Evening, and Sunday World titles were bought by the Scripps-Howard chain; the morning and Sunday editions were dropped, and the Evening World was merged with the New York Evening Telegram, an action that suited Americans’ preference for afternoon papers at that time.

Many of the new readers were stolen from other papers—the Daily Mirror saw its figure drop from more than one million to 700,000 by 1934—but newspapers in general acquired 1.5 million new readers, so that by the end of the decade there was a national newspaper aimed at every socioeconomic class.

Hearst’s life partially inspired the 1941 classic film Citizen Kane.

He began his television broadcast career with CBS in 1956, and his writing, narrative skills, and wry but poignant news commentaries led him steadily through the ranks until he became a regular substitute for Cronkite on the CBS Evening News.

Dan Rather first gained national attention for his on-the-scene reporting of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas in 1963.

A newspaper columnist, the author of sixteen books, and a writer and producer of numerous CBS News special reports, Rooney was best known for the first-person essays that he delivered at the conclusion of each episode of 60 Minutes, the CBS news magazine that began in 1968.

Banner image: Walter Cronkite reporting on moon landing for CBS News, July 20,1969.

When Gannett purchased the paper in 1971, its in-house publication, The Gannetteer, profiled the most recent addition to the firm's stable of newspapers.

In 1972 Goldin joined 60 Minutes, where she would go on to win multiple Emmy awards and produce a series of hard-hitting and wide-ranging investigative pieces as well as revealing profiles of cultural icons.

Since 1980, the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History has pursued new directions in research and collection building.

Ben Sargent, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982, drew more than eight thousand editorial cartoons during his tenure at the Austin American-Statesman.

Cronkite’s relationship with the Briscoe Center began in 1988, when the center’s executive director, Don Carleton, established a news media history archive.

In 1990, The News-Press won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards' grand prize for "Far From the Dream," a 12-part series on the problems of the region's blacks.

Cronkite used those interviews to write his autobiography, A Reporter’s Life (1996), and to create the eight-part television series Cronkite Remembers.

Fang, Irving E. A History of Mass Communication: Six Information Revolutions (Boston: Focal PressUSA, 1997), 103.

Her madhouse performance inaugurated the performative tactic that would become her trademark reporting style (Lutes, 2002).” Such articles brought Bly much notoriety and fame, and she became known as the first stunt journalist.

The News-Press won Associated Press Media Editors' first Innovation Award in 2007 amid competition from national news organizations.

In 2012, Newspapers.com began digitizing newspaper archives, starting with some of the nation’s oldest, most prestigious newspapers, such as The New York Times and Chicago Tribune.

The News-Press won its first Edward R. Murrow Award in 2014 for a video series.