The Gainesville Sun is a newspaper

Newspaper

A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

 published daily in Gainesville

Gainesville, Florida

Gainesville is the largest city in, and the county seat of, Alachua County, Florida, United States as well as the principal city of the Gainesville, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area . The preliminary 2010 Census population count for Gainesville is 124,354. Gainesville is home to the sixth...

, Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, covering the North-Central portion

North Central Florida

North Central Florida is a region of the U.S. state of Florida which comprises the north-central part of the state and encompasses the Gainesville, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area , Bradford, Columbia, Hamilton, Lafayette, Madison, Marion, Putnam, Suwannee and Union counties...

 of the state. It is a part of the New York Times Regional Media Group. The paper is published by James E. Doughton, the paper's Executive Editor is Jim Osteen, managing editor is Jacki Levine, and the editorial page editor is Ron Cunningham.

History

The paper was founded in July 1876 as the Gainesville Times, by brothers E. M. and William Wade Hampton

William Wade Hampton

William Wade Hampton was one of the first attorneys in Gainesville, Florida. He and his brother Edwin moved to Gainesville from Tampa, Florida in 1875. Wade and his brother Edwin founded the town's first paper, the in 1876...

, and was renamed as The Gainesville Sun in February 1879. It went through a series of ownership and name changes in the 1880s and 1890s, first being consolidated with Henry Hamilton McCreary's Weekly Bee as the Gainesville Sun and Bee, then as the Gainesville Daily Sun, and finally back to the Gainesville Sun.

It was bought by W.M. Pepper, Sr., in 1917 for $50,000, and was published by the Pepper family for three generations, until it was sold to the Cowles Media Company

Cowles Media Company

Cowles Media Company was a newspaper, magazine and information publishing company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States. The company operated Cowles Business Media, Cowles Creative Publishing and Cowles Enthusiast Media units. The McClatchy Company purchased Cowles Media in 1998...

 in 1962. During the time it was owned by the Pepper family (specifically in 1922) an editor at the paper openly admitted his membership in the Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...

 and praised the Klan in print. This attitude helps to explain the editorial published in the paper following the Rosewood massacre justifying the actions of the whites, saying "Let it be understood now and forever that he, whether white or black, who brutally assaults an innocent and helpless woman, shall die the death of a dog." Conversely, the Tampa Tribune of the time called it "a lasting blot on the people of Levy county", clearly condemning rather than justifying the massacre.

In 1971, it was sold to The New York Times Company

The New York Times Company

The New York Times Company is an American media company best known as the publisher of its namesake, The New York Times. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. has served as Chairman of the Board since 1997. It is headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City....

.

An online edition was launched in 1995, initially called SunOne, and later simply GainesvilleSun.com. The website is now known as Gainesville.com. In 2005, it launched The Gainesville Guardian, a weekly paper aimed at East Gainesville and the city's African-American population

Awards

The Gainesville Sun has won two Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

s: publisher John R. Harrison won in 1966 for his campaign for better housing codes, and editorialist Horance G. Davis, Jr. won in 1971 for his editorials in support of peaceful desegregation of the local school system.

External links

• Gainesville.com, Gainesville Sun home page