This is Floyd Wynne with THE VIEW FROM HERE 6/21/05

It’s another big step in the long history of newspapers in the community.
I’m referring to the Herald and News becoming a morning newspaper...quite a change that we hope will be well accepted.
The history of this newspaper goes back a long way and involves many names....papers being sold and re-sold and being given different names.
A man named Fred Cronemiller began publishing the Evening Herald in 1906. It began as a five column tabloid. At the time Wesley O. Smith, who later established the Smith-Bates Printing Company, bought the newspaper, the Republican, in April of 1903. Smith then sold the newspaper to J. Wesley Hamaker, who was running for the Senate. Hamaker used the newspaper as a political tool, but when he lost the election, he sold it back to Smith. By 1905 the paper had a circulation of 367.
In 1906 Smith hired E. J. Murray to edit the Republican and the plant was moved to the Van Fleet Electric building on the corner of fourth and main where the building is still standing.
In 1908 Smith and Murray bought out Cronemiller. They operated the Republican as a weekly, and the Herald as a daily.
Then along came the three courthouse struggle when the K.D. Development Company moved to develop the growth of the city beyond the Link River area. They called them the East enders.
The West enders as they called themselves decided they needed a paper to support their cause and George Baldwin, Charles Moore Sr., Alex Smith Jr., and Fred Melhase established the Chronicle in 1910. They later lost the paper to A.C. Wren who on October 1911 sold the paper to E. J. Murray who in turn sold it to Sam Evans in 1912.
Now...three daily newspapers were circulating in the area. Smith’s Evening Herald, Murray’s Evening Chronicle and Wren’s Pioneer Press.
Evans purchased the Pioneer Press along with the Chronicle and changed the name to the Northwestern. It represented an investment of about $300,000. It was a seven column daily with a circulation of 1400.
The Northwestern built a plant at the corner of Twelfth and East Main...where the Herald and News is located today. They had excellent equipment and were well financed while the Herald was struggling.
After three years of operation the Northwestern was deep in debt and the Sheriff locked the doors of the building. Evans then left town.
The building, though, was in good condition and Smith moved his Republican newspaper and the Herald into the building...the same building that the Herald and News was in when I came here in 1948.
Smith turned the Republican from a weekly into a semi-weekly calling it the semi-weekly Republican. In 1919 he sold both papers to Murray.
A newspaper called the Record, which was started by E.B. Hall, later purchased by Nathan Merrill and moved to Merrill, and after several owners, it was moved to Klamath Falls in 1915.
In 1920 the Record became a daily paper and competed with Murray’s papers. A corporation headed by Don Belding had bought it. Murray and Beldin then began a struggle. Belding finally was given the option of buying the Herald after two months if he could finance it. Much of the Record equipment had moved into the Herald’s plant. Unable to effect the purchase, Belding demanded his equipment back, but in a legal struggle Murray emerged the owner of both papers. He renamed the Record....the Sun.
On October 13, 1926 Bruce Dennis purchased both papers and then dropped the Sun.
Yet another newspaper, the Klamath News, was started November 13, 1924 by Nate Otterbein, Walter Stonach and F. D. Nickle.
They brought in the first linotype operation to the area. In 1927 Bruce Dennis bought this paper. Now he printed both the Herald and the News in the basement of the Odd Fellows Building on Main Street.
The Southern Publishing Company, headed by Frank Jenkins purchased the two papers in June 1932. The two papers were moved into the old Northwestern building in 1936. Jenkins combined the two papers into one, the Herald and News, on June l, 1942.
In May 1960 the paper affiliated with the Scripps League.
William Sweetland became the Publisher, followed three years later by Joe Caraher, later James Allen and several others. Currently the newspaper is headed by Publisher Heidi Wright. Much of the newspaper history was written by Devere Helfrich in one of his Echoes.

This is Floyd Wynne and that’s THE VIEW FROM HERE.