Ashland Daily Tidings

Ashland Daily Tidings
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatTabloid
Owner(s)Rosebud Media
Founded1876
Ceased publicationAug. 1, 2021
Circulation< 2,000 (Monday through Saturday)
Websitedailytidings.com

The Ashland Daily Tidings was a daily newspaper serving the city of Ashland, Oregon, United States. It was owned and published by Edd Rountree from 1960 to 1985 when he retired and subsequently purchased by Medford-based Mail Tribune, which it continued to publish until announcing that paper would close on January 13, 2023.[1]

History

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Edd Ellsworth Rountree was the owner and publisher from 1960 to 1970. He was known statewide for his popular "Friday Fish Fry" column on politics and current events which appeared on front page with a caricature above noting his opinion.[2] Rountree sold the paper to the Democrat-Herald Publishing Co, which published the Albany Democrat-Herald.[3] Capital Cities purchased the company in 1980,[4] which itself was acquired by the The Walt Disney Company in 1995.[5] Disney sold its Oregon newspapers to Lee Enterprises in 1997.[6] Lee sold the Daily Tidings to the Dow Jones & Company in 2002.[7] The paper were managed by Local Media Group, another subsidiary of the international company News Corp.[8]

On September 4, 2013, News Corp announced that it would sell Local Media Group to Newcastle Investment Corp., an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group, for $87 million. The newspapers were to be operated by GateHouse Media, a newspaper group owned by Fortress. News Corp CEO and former Wall Street Journal editor Robert James Thomson indicated that the newspapers were "not strategically consistent with the emerging portfolio" of the company.[9] GateHouse in turn filed prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 27, 2013, to restructure its debt obligations in order to accommodate the acquisition.[10]

In 2017, the Tidings and the Mail Tribune were sold by GateHouse to Rosebud Media.[11] On July 15, 2021, the owner of the Daily Tidings announced the paper would be replaced with an Ashland Edition of the Mail Tribune starting in August.[12] Two yeas later the Tribune ceased on January 13, 2023.[1]

Awards

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The Tidings was one of three daily newspapers to win the Charles Sprague Award of General Excellence from the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association (ONPA) in 1981.[13] In 2006 the Daily Tidings was awarded the "General Excellence" prize by the ONPA. In 2015, it won five awards including a first place for best educational coverage, from the ONPA.[14]

Front page of the newspaper on September 2, 1919

References

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  1. ^ a b Njus, Elliot; Eastman, Janet (January 11, 2023). "Mail Tribune, storied newspaper in Medford, to abruptly shut down". The Oregonian/OregonLive. Archived from the original on January 12, 2023. Retrieved January 11, 2023.
  2. ^ "Retired Ashland Publisher Dies at 67". The Oregonian. June 11, 1985. p. 39.
  3. ^ "Albany Company Acquires Lebanon, Ashland Papers". The Capital Journal. March 4, 1970. p. 1.
  4. ^ "Paper sale should be final today". Albany Democrat-Herald. July 14, 1980. p. 3.
  5. ^ Geraldine Fabrikant (5 January 1996). "THE MEDIA BUSINESS;Disney and ABC Shareholders Solidly Approve Merger Deal". The New York Times. Retrieved July 8, 2013.
  6. ^ "Lee Enterprises closes purchase of Oregon newspapers from ABC". The Oregonian. September 9, 1997. p. 45.
  7. ^ "Dow Jones to buy two Oregon papers". Albany Democrat-Herald. October 2, 2002. p. 4.
  8. ^ Rafter, Michelle V. (January 31, 2009). "Good news for small papers". Oregon Business.
  9. ^ Frank, Christine (September 4, 2013). "News Corp. sells 33 papers to New York investors". New York Business Journal. Retrieved August 9, 2018.
  10. ^ Pearson, Sophia; Kary, Tiffany (September 27, 2013). "GateHouse Files for Bankruptcy as Part of Fortress Plan". Bloomberg. Retrieved August 9, 2018.
  11. ^ Stiles, Greg (January 31, 2017). "Updated: Mail Tribune and Daily Tidings sold to Rosebud Media". Mail Tribune. Archived from the original on February 3, 2017. Retrieved January 14, 2023.
  12. ^ Saslow, Steven (July 15, 2021). "The Time is Now. Changes to the Mail Tribune and Ashland Tidings". Mail Tribune. Archived from the original on July 15, 2021. Retrieved 2023-01-12.
  13. ^ Colby, Richard (July 11, 1981). "Publishers Honor Frohnmayer". The Oregonian.
  14. ^ Daily Tidings earns 5 awards from publishers' group, Mail Tribune, July 24, 2016. Retrieved May 24,2022.
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