The Bellingham Herald is the only daily newspaper published in Bellingham, Washington

Bellingham, Washington

Bellingham is the largest city in, and the county seat of, Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It is the twelfth-largest city in the state. Situated on Bellingham Bay, Bellingham is protected by Lummi Island, Portage Island, and the Lummi Peninsula, and opens onto the Strait of Georgia...

, in the United States. It is currently owned by The McClatchy Company

The McClatchy Company

The McClatchy Company is a publicly traded American publishing company based in Sacramento, California. It operates 30 daily newspapers in 15 states and has an average weekday circulation of 2.2 million and Sunday circulation of 2.8 million...

.

History

The Bellingham Herald began publication on March 10, 1890 as the tri-weekly Fairhaven Herald. The newspaper went through several changes in its early years, including temporary suspension and a merger with a competing weekly. In 1900 the newspaper purchased the first linotype

Linotype machine

The Linotype typesetting machine is a "line casting" machine used in printing. The name of the machine comes from the fact that it produces an entire line of metal type at once, hence a line-o'-type, a significant improvement over manual typesetting....

 on the West Coast

West Coast of the United States

West Coast or Pacific Coast are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. The term most often refers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Although not part of the contiguous United States, Alaska and Hawaii do border the Pacific Ocean but can't be included in...

. When neighboring communities of Sehome

Sehome

Sehome is a neighborhood in Bellingham, Washington. The neighborhood, named after Sehome Hill, was originally a town owned by the Bellingham Bay & British Columbia Railroad Company . The name comes from Nooksack S-yah-whom, the name of an early Indian in the area....

, Whatcom and Fairhaven

Fairhaven, Washington

Fairhaven, Washington was founded in the late 1880s and is now part of the City of Bellingham, Washington, USA. It is on the south side of Bellingham, and borders Bellingham Bay on the west and Western Washington University on the northeast...

 consolidated into the city of Bellingham in 1903, the paper was first printed as The Bellingham Herald.

There were many who filled the roles of publisher and editor over the years but perhaps the most notable was the Sefrit-Carver team under the ownership of Sidney Albert "Sam" Perkins, which began in 1911 and lasted into the 1950s. Federated Publications bought The Herald in 1967. In 1971 Federated Publications merged with Gannett Corporation. The Herald switched to morning delivery in May 1997. Knight Ridder

Knight Ridder

Knight Ridder was an American media company, specializing in newspaper and Internet publishing. Until it was bought by The McClatchy Company on June 27, 2006, it was the second-largest newspaper publisher in the United States, with 32 daily newspapers sold.- History :The corporate ancestors of...

acquired The Bellingham Herald in 2005. Knight Ridder was purchased by McClatchy in 2006. On September 23, 2010 Mark Owings became the Publisher of the Herald; he had been Finance Director since 2004 and a Herald employee for 12 years before being named to his new position.

The Herald Building

The Herald Building in downtown Bellingham is on the corner of State and Chestnut Streets. The building, built in 1926 as an eight-story office building, houses The Bellingham Heralds main offices on the first and second floors; tenant businesses occupy the upper floors. The lit sign atop the building served sailors as a navigation aid for many years. Morse Hardware had a similar sign saying "MORSE" on top of it for decades - and boaters would use the two signs at night for navigation.