Purcellville Gazette

The Purcellville Gazette is a weekly tabloid-style newspaper based in Winchester, Virginia and covering the area in and around Purcellville, Virginia. It is fully supported by amounts paid by advertisers and is distributed without charge. In addition to Purcellville, the Gazette is an Official Paper of Record for Loudoun County, including Middleburg, Hamilton, Lovettsville and Round Hill. The Purcellville Gazette was also the first local paper to publish every issue of its paper, ads included, on its website for the general public.

The paper has a decidely conservative political and social editorial stance. For example, on the eve of the 2008 United States presidential election it published a cartoon showing then-candidate Barack Obama riding on the shoulders of Karl Marx. Or the August 12, 2011 issue in which the Editor's column strongly advocated conservative fiscal solutions based entirely on drastic expenditure reduction rather than including any revenue increases ("Expenditures must be cut. School budgets must be reduced. The Sherriff’s budget must be reduced. County staff must be reduced . . . . Fewer hours available for libraries, shorter hours at parks" and volunteer trash collection.) Other articles and opinion pieces by its staff writers, as well as the majority of the "letters to the editor" it chooses to publish, generally take a socially and politically conservative view regarding the subject at hand.

Founded in May 2004, it took only one year before it was named one of the top three new businesses of the year by Loudoun's Chamber of Commerce in 2005. The paper was founded by Publisher R. Ben Weber, a native of the Shenandoah Valley. The paper's owner, Master Media Group, Inc., has provided political contributions to R. Ben Weber's political campaigns as a Republican candidate ^[2] and has provided political contributions through R. Ben Weber for at least one other Republican candidate^[3].

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