The front page of The Patriot-News |
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | Advance Publications |
| Publisher | John A. Kirkpatrick |
| Editor | David Newhouse |
| Founded | March 4, 1854 (as The Patriot) |
| Headquarters | 2020 Technology Pkwy, Ste. 300 Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania United States |
| Official website | patriot-news.com |
The Patriot-News is the largest daily newspaper serving the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania metropolitan area. In 2005, the newspaper was ranked in the top 100 in daily/Sunday circulation in the United States. It has been owned by Advance Publications since 1947.
The official birth of The Patriot-News is celebrated as March 4, 1854, but its history goes back to December 1820, involving a weekly newspaper named The Pennsylvania Intelligencer.[1]
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Despite its relatively modest size, The Patriot-News has consistently won top state journalism awards in competition with Pennsylvania's largest newspapers. In 2003, the paper won the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association's G. Richard Dew award for its coverage of the attempted sale of Hershey Foods. In 2004, the newspaper was named as one of "10 That Do It Right" by Editor & Publisher magazine. The newspaper has won the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association's Keystone Press Award Division I Sweepstakes - which goes to the large metro newspaper that wins the most journalism awards - in 2004, 2006 and 2010, competing against the newspapers in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Allentown as the smallest paper in that division.
The year 2004 also began a run in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association's Newspaper of the Year awards which has been unmatched in the contest's history. The Patriot-News has been either first or second place as the state's Newspaper of the Year for seven years in a row - with first place wins in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2010. The contest includes more than 50 newspapers from across the state including Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
The newspaper's reporters have won the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association's Distinguished Writing Award multiple times. The first award went to reporter Jim Lewis in 2001, 2004 and 2005. Reporter Ford Turner won second place in 2008 and first place in 2010. Staff photographer Sean Simmers won second place in PNA's Distinguished Writing Award in 2010.
In 2007, public watchdog reporter Jan Murphy won a First Amendment award from the Associated Press Managing Editors for her stories uncovering profligate spending at PHEAA, the state agency that gives college loans to students. That same year, reporter Ford Turner won the APME's Public Service award for uncovering an unusually high rate of cancer among residents of a small neighborhood of Selinsgrove, Pa. Murphy also won first prize in investigative reporting from the National Education Writers Association for her stories on PHEAA spending.
Investigative reporter Pete Shellem, who died in 2009, received widespread recognition for his work in freeing the innocent from prison. Shellem's stories in The Patriot-News resulted in the release of four people who had been convicted of murder - Patty Carbone who had served 11 years, Steven Crawford who had served 28 years, Barry Laughman who had served 16 years, David Gladden who had served 12 years. His reporting also freed Charles Dubs, who had served five years on a rape conviction. In the New York Times obituary for Shellem, Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, called him "a rare, one-man journalism innocence project."
Crime reporter and Penn State grad Sara Ganim began gaining national attention in the wake of the Penn State sex abuse scandal after Sandusky's indictment in November, 2011. Ganim had written a substantial piece in March, 2011, when few others were covering the story. Among other follow-ups, she then spoke to two of the mothers of alleged victims for the paper in the immediate wake of the indictment. “You can credit the Patriot-News with giving me the time a reporter needs to cover this kind of story,” she said to a New York media columnist who specially noted her coverage. The columnist wrote that Kim Jones, reporting at Penn State for WFAN, "also mentioned Ganim’s stellar work" and that Jason McIntyre of the sports blog The Big Lead among others had been singling out Ganim -- and her P-N colleague Ben Jones, in McIntyre's case -- on Twitter.[2]
The World Association of Newspapers Young Reader Prize for Newspaper in Education in 2007 was awarded to The Patriot-News for its SchoolHouse News program with the Harrisburg (Pa.) School District.
2011 - Over 492,000 readers weekly in print and on Pennlive
As of January 2011, the newsstand price is 75¢ daily and $2.00 for the Sunday edition.