The Herald (Rock Hill)

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The Herald
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet

Owner	The McClatchy Company
Publisher	Debbie Abels
Editor	Paul Osmundson
Founded	1872 (as The Lantern)
Price	USD 0.35 Monday-Saturday USD 1.00 Sundays
Headquarters	132 W. Main St. Rock Hill, SC 29732 United States
Circulation	Daily: 31,614 Sunday: 33,020

Website: www.heraldonline.com

The Herald is a daily morning newspaper published in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in the United States. Its coverage area includes York County, where Rock Hill is located, and two neighboring counties in the Upstate: Chester and Lancaster. In 1990, the paper was bought by The McClatchy Company of Sacramento, California. The publisher is Debbie Abels, and the editor is Paul Osmundson.

[edit] History

The paper traces its lineage to 1872, when The Lantern, a four-page weekly, was founded. The newspaper was designed to be a voice of reason in opposition to the extremism of the Ku Klux Klan, which was politically influential in York County at the time. The Lantern changed hands several times and ceased publication in January 1874. But its owners soon started a new newspaper called The Grange, which focused more on farming than politics. In 1876, The Grange was merged with a newspaper called The Benefactor to create The Hampton Herald, named in honor of Wade Hampton, the former Confederate general who was running for governor of South Carolina that year on a platform in opposition to reconstruction. The name was changed by new owners to The Rock Hill Herald in January 1879.

The paper became a semi-weekly in 1893. In 1911, it was converted to a daily afternoon paper — except Sundays — and renamed The Evening Herald. That name and production schedule would endure for 75 years through several ownership changes.

In March 1985, the company was purchased by the News & Observer Co. of Raleigh, North Carolina, then owned by descendants of Josephus Daniels. The new owners changed the Saturday edition to morning and got rid of the Evening part of the name. In 1986, they launched a Sunday edition and two years later switched to morning publication seven days a week. In 1990, the Daniels family sold the paper to McClatchy. The purchase of The Herald and two other dailies in South Carolina -- The Island Packet in Hilton Head, and The Beaufort Gazette of Beaufort -- marked McClatchy's first foray into the Southern United States. The Herald was reunited with the N&O when McClatchy bought the Raleigh paper in 1995.

McClatchy's purchase of most of Knight Ridder's properties, finalized in June 2006, made The Herald a sister publication of its longtime rival, the Charlotte Observer. The papers plan to remain separate, and the publisher of the Observer has said the paper has no plans to close its Rock Hill bureau.

On November 7th, 2007 it was announced that Valerie Canepa, publisher of the Herald for the past four and a half years, would be moving to Columbus, GA to become publisher of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. At the same time it was also announced that Debbie Abels, 34-year veteran of the Charlotte Observer, would take over as publisher beginning November 26, 2007. Debbie Abels will also report to the publisher of The Charlotte Observer, Ann Caulkins, instead of the McClatchy Regional Vice President as Canepa did.

Jim Hoagland, a nationally syndicated columnist for The Washington Post and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, began his career working summers at The Evening Herald.