Who We Are Today
Serving Grays Harbor and northern Pacific counties since 1889, The Daily World is the only daily newspaper (circulation 14,100) on the coast of Washington state. The Daily World, which also publishes the East County News, a total-market-coverage weekly serving eastern Grays Harbor County, is owned by Sound Publishing, Inc. of Everett, Washington. With state-of-the-art printing, The Daily World also does full-color commercial printing for advertisers and several other weekly and monthly publications. Our goal is to better serve our customers and we will continue to invest and improve our newspaper and production facility to achieve that purpose.
Our History in Brief
The newspaper made its debut as the Aberdeen Weekly Bulletin on Wednesday, July 31, 1889, three months ahead of statehood. It evolved into The Daily Bulletin in 1900 with an Associated Press franchise. But it was still filled with patent medicine ads and serialized potboilers. The Bulletin, frankly, was a pretty thin sheet. Its front page featured shipping reports, real estate ads and horrifically matter-of-fact notices of logging and sawmill casualties. In May of 1908, everything changed. The paper was sold to two bright young newsmen from Tacoma, Werner Andrew Rupp, a political reporter and editorial writer, and John F. Gilbert, a gifted cartoonist. They renamed it The Aberdeen World – the name symbolic of their ambitions. The first edition appeared on Monday, June 1, 1908. (“Daily” was not part of the original “flag.”) Gilbert grew restless under the 90-hour-a-week pace set by Rupp, who had his sights set on publishing one of the best small dailies in America – and making money, too.
“The Boss” takes the lead
They called it The Aberdeen Daily World for the first time on Jan. 18, 1909. The name remained unchanged for 60 years. Gilbert departed on Jan. 4, 1910. Rupp became the sole proprietor, editor and publisher and was in control for the next 53 years. “The Boss,” as he was affectionately addressed by his employees, took great pride in the scope of his paper’s news coverage. Rupp was a University of Washington regent, chairman of the state Republican Central Committee and a charter member of Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington. Intensely interested in world peace, he covered the first sessions of the United Nations at San Francisco in 1948. The newspaper dedicated its handsome new brick building at Market and I streets on Oct. 1, 1927. It featured a large new press, AP and UPI news services and a greatly expanded newsroom. When the Depression hit, Rupp persevered, drawing on the huge profits he had made in the previous decade to keep the paper afloat. Rupp, “the dean of the state’s publishers,” died in 1963. On Sept. 1, 1967, his heirs sold the paper to young Richard Lafromboise, who also owned The Daily Chronicle at Centralia, but he died unexpectedly only 10 months later, July 9, 1968.
“More than an Aberdeen paper”
Donrey Media Group headquartered in Fort Smith, Arkansas and owned by Donald W. Reynolds, bought the paper on Nov. 1, 1968. On March 2, 1969, it became The Daily World to signify that it was “more than an Aberdeen paper.” On that same day, Donrey announced that the Saturday edition was being jettisoned in favor of a Sunday paper, the first in 60 years. The company reinstated the Saturday afternoon edition in April of 1970. The Daily World was a seven-day-a-week paper for the first time since 1909. The Daily World newspaper dedicated its new $1.7 million plant at State and Michigan streets in June of 1973. In 1993, following the death of Reynolds the Donrey Media Group was purchased by Stephens Inc. of Little Rock, Arkansas. The group was renamed the Stephens Media Group and is now headquartered at the company’s flagship newspaper, the Las Vegas Review Journal. Since then, The Daily World has kept pace with the rapid changes in technology and in 1998 went through a complete redesign of the newspaper. Since that time the newspaper has become fully paginated, uses all-digital photography, and made major pressroom and prepress upgrades to facilitate more full color pages. It was also in 1998 that the newspaper launched its web site, www.thedailyworld.com. Sound Publishing purchased The Daily World, The Vidette (Montesano, Wash.), North Coast News (Ocean Shores, Wash.) and South Beach Bulletin (Westport, Wash.) in October, 2014.
A Third Book
The Daily World has won more than 60 awards over the past 25 years, with special recognition for editorials, columns, features, history and sports coverage. It has published three books of features and photos. The latest book, “On The Harbor,” features the “Stories of the Century” from 1900 to 2000, including:
- The “Black Friday” fire of 1903;
- The “Ghoul of Grays Harbor,” Billy Gohl
- The “Wildman of the Wynooche,” John Tornow;
- The “Wobbly” free speech fight of 1911-12;
- The labor strife of the 1930s;
- “Who Killed Laura Law?”;
- Capt. Nick Yantsin’s raid on the best little whorehouse in town;
- The birth of Ocean Shores;
- The fall of WPPSS;
- The spotted owl crisis
- The rise of “grunge rockers” Nirvana
