Times-Standard

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Times-Standard
Type Daily newspaper
Format Broadsheet
Owner MediaNews Group
Publisher Greg Stevens
Editor Rich Somerville
Founded 1854
Price US$ 0.46 + tax Daily
US$ 1.38 + tax Sunday
Headquarters 930 6th Street
Eureka, California 95501 Flag of the United States United States
Circulation 20,000
Website: times-standard.com

The Times-Standard is the only major daily newspaper covering the far North Coast of California. Headquartered in Eureka, the paper provides coverage of international, national, state and local news in addition to entertainment, sports, and classified listings. On the local level, the paper extensively covers all of Humboldt County while providing partial coverage of neighboring Del Norte, Mendocino, and Trinity counties.

[edit] History

After Eureka was formed in 1854, the Humboldt Times began publishing in what is known today as Old Town Eureka.

Over the years, the Times had much in the way of competition, most notably from the Humboldt Standard, which began publishing in 1875. After a lengthy period of spirited competition and then a period of joint ownership with separate operations, the two papers merged in 1967 to form what is now the Times-Standard.

According to the newspaper's "about us" section on its Web page, www.times-standard.com, moving day came on Dec. 7, 1968. Staff writer Andrew Genzoli later recalled, "There hadn’t been so much excitement in the newsroom since Pearl Harbor."

Over the years, Humboldt County has been the home to many other newspapers — some of which appear in a flash, others which last for decades. They include the Humboldt Bay Journal (1865-1867), National Index (1867-1868), Humboldt Bay Democrat (1868), Northern Independent (1869-1872) and finally the West Coast Signal which began in 1871 and lasted until 1880.

The advent of the telegraph in the 1870s encouraged the development of even more newspapers, some dailies and some weeklies. They included the Evening Star (1876-1878), Evening Herald (1879), Eureka News/News/Semi-Weekly News (1881) and finally Western Watchman (1884-1898) and Humboldt Mail (1887-1890).

For a time the Times-Standard was the only daily newspaper of Humboldt County. Eventually, it passed out of local, family ownership into a newspaper chain, Thomson Newspapers, who held it until 1996 when it was bought by Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group, which owns it to this day.

More recently, the Times-Standard has again been the subject of vigorous competition, through the establishment of another daily newspaper, The Eureka Reporter. Humboldt County, with a population of not much more than 120,000, is a small area to feature two daily newspapers.

After several years of direct, head-to-head competition, The Eureka Reporter announced that it would be ratcheting down production to five days a week. Some call this a victory for the Times-Standard, while others believe The Eureka Reporter's best years lay ahead.

[edit] Awards

  • The Times-Standard received the Newspaper Association of America's Award of Excellence in the 2008 Media Innovation Awards competition.

[edit] References