Publications

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  Bay City Tribune

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  The Bay City Tribune is the second-oldest newspaper in Texas. Established in Matagorda in 1845, the newspaper moved to Bay City when the location of the county seat was changed in 1894. It was published as both a daily and weekly from 1904-1959, when the weekly ceased publication. Carey Smith Sr. bought the Tribune in 1919 and owned it until his death in 1937. He was succeeded by son Carey Smith Jr., who led the paper until it was bought by Bay City Newspaper Inc. and Southern Newspapers Inc. in 1958. The newspaper converted to twice-weekly publication in 2002. Major events covered by the paper include several hurricanes and a yellow fever epidemic of the 1870s.

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  The Baytown Sun

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  Baytown's only daily newspaper became known as The Baytown Sun on Aug. 17, 1949, the year after the consolidation of the three communities of Goose Creek, Pelly and Baytown into one city, according to Baytown historian Buck Young.

  In 1950, Carmage Walls bought The Sun from Robert Matherne and promoted editor Fred Hartman to publisher.

  The Sun was Walls's first newspaper in Texas, the foundation of the group now known as Southern Newspapers, Inc. SNI owns community newspapers in Texas, Alabama and Georgia. It is a private company owned by Carmage Walls's widow, Martha Ann Walls, and their daughter, Lissa Walls Vahldiek.

  Baytown's first newspaper was The Goose Creek Gasser, founded in 1919 by Frank Boyer. In 1924, it was sold to three men who changed the name to the Goose Creek Tribune, a twice-weekly publication. By 1928, it became a daily.

  The Tribune also started a weekly in Baytown, the News-Herald. Meanwhile, in Pelly, a former Tribune employee, Joe Noland, began the Telegram, and C. R. Myers, a perpetual political candidate, published the Democrat.

  With the Great Depression, few business owners in a single small area could advertise in three newspapers, and all but the Democrat merged as the Peoples Printing Company, and in 1931, the first Tri-Cities Sun was published. In the late 30s, the newspaper's name changed to The Daily Sun, and in 1949, to The Baytown Sun. In October of 2009, The Baytown Sun began publishing Tuesday through Friday and Sunday.

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  The Facts

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  The Facts newspaper, as it is now known, began on Feb. 28, 1913, as the Freeport Facts. Serving a community that was largely employed by the Freeport Sulfur Company, life was quiet on the Texas coast where the Brazos River meets the Gulf of Mexico.

  In 1938 the Dow Chemical Company chose the port city to begin magnesium production for a looming World War II. The city was literally transformed overnight, and as the area grew, so did the newspaper.

  Southern Newspapers, Inc., purchased the newspaper in the early 1950s. In 1976 the paper relocated to its current facility in Clute, Texas.

  The Facts is currently a seven-day morning newspaper serving the cities and townships of Southern Brazoria County along the Texas Gulf Coast.

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  The Galveston Daily News

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  The Daily News holds the honor and distinction of being the oldest newspaper in the great state of Texas. Founded on April 11, 1842, The Daily News is in the 172nd year of serving the residents and visitors of one of the most popular destinations in the state.

  Based on Galveston Island, home to the city of Galveston, the newspaper has grown tremendously over the years from a weekly to a full-service, seven-day-a-week news organization with a full assortment of magazines, digital services and other useful tools for the community. The Daily News is also home to the popular and award-winning Coast Monthly magazine.

  The Daily News has chronicled the history of the community from the days when Sam Houston served as the president of the then independent Republic of Texas. It served through the occupation by Union forces during the Civil War (publishing in Houston while the island was under Union occupation), the Great Storm (hurricane) of 1900 that claimed more than 6,000 lives (the highest loss of life in U.S. history), and the colorful days when wide-open gambling and Hollywood entertainers were regularly features of the island.

  Another interesting footnote in history is that The Daily News spawned The Dallas Morning News on Oct. 1, 1885.

  Today The Daily News serves a county of more than 300,000 just south of Houston, bordering the NASA space complex in the north to the remote beachfront homes along the Gulf of Mexico.

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  The Kerrville Daily Times

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  The heart of the Texas Hill Country, Kerrville, population 22,000, is known for its beautiful landscape of rolling hills, streams and the majestic Guadalupe River that runs through the town.

  Kerrville is named after James Kerr, a major in the Texas Revolution, and friend of settler-founder Joshua Brown, who settled in the area to start a shingle making camp in the late 1840s.

  Kerrville is home to The Kerrville Folk Festival, The Symphony of the Hills, Kerr Arts and Cultural Center, Hill Country Arts Foundation, and Museum of Western Art.

  Major employers include Peterson Regional Medical Center, Mooney Aviation, James Avery Jewelry, and Schreiner University.

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  The Lufkin Daily News

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  Lufkin was founded in the 1880’s to serve as a hub for the area’s timber industry. With a city population of more that 37,000 and more that 87,000 in Angelina County, the area continues to serve as a regional transportation, retail, banking and medical hub for a ten-county area.

  A strong manufacturing base includes Lufkin Industries, a subsidiary of GE, Georgia Pacific and Pilgrim’s Pride. Two major hospitals serve the area. Lufkin is located at the intersection of US Highways 59 and 69. US 59 has been designated a part of the Interstate Highway 69 corridor. Lufkin is blessed with abundant resources, including water, and is the gateway to Sam Rayburn Reservoir, a 69,000-acre lake east of the city.

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  The Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel

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  Nacogdoches is located approximately 140 miles NNE of Houston. It has a population of 33,000 and is described as "the oldest town in Texas”. There is evidence of settlement on the same site dating back 10,000 years.

  During Texas’s fight for independence Nacogdoches was a frequent destination to historic figures such as Sam Houston and David Crockett.

  Nacogdoches is also home to Stephen F. Austin State University, which was founded in 1923 as a teacher’s college and currently home to 13,000 students annually.

  Notable industry includes Pilgrim’s Pride, Etech, NIBCO and Foretravel.

  Notable people from Nacogdoches include American soccer player Clint Dempsey, award winning author Joe R. Lansdale, and professional football coach Bum Phillips.

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  New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung

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  New Braunfels, Texas, was founded in 1848 by a group of German settlers led by Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels. Today, the Comal County seat is a thriving, proud community nestled between two major metropolitan cities along the booming Interstate 35 corridor. New Braunfels’ population more than doubled between 2000 and 2010, jumping to 57,000-plus in the most recent census. That continuing growth has spawned a vibrant economy that’s fueled by tourism and water recreation, quarries, the healthcare industry, nearby military complexes and a budding retail sector. New Braunfels is the national headquarters for world-famous Schlitterbahn Waterparks.

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  The Paris News

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  On the banks of the Red River in Northeast Texas, Paris is a community filled with a history and a spirit that can be seen in its progress and its people. The county seat of Lamar County, Paris willed itself back from a devastating 1916 fire that destroyed nearly half the town to become the second-largest Paris in the world. Of course, it’s the home of a 65-feet tall replica of the Eiffel Tower, which wears a giant red cowboy hat.

  Paris is home to major employers Campbell Soup and Kimberly-Clark, and a world-renown healthcare community led by Paris Regional Medical Center. It also is an education leader thanks to Paris Junior College and five highly accredited K-12 school districts.

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  The Seguin Gazette

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  Seguin is a city of 25,000 nestled along the banks of the Guadalupe River east of San Antonio. The city is closely associated with the pecan — it is home to the "World’s Largest Pecan” and featured in HEB’s Creamy Creations line with their Texas Vanilla Seguin Pecan ice cream. The blue collar community is home to plants for major industries including Caterpillar, Alamo Group, CMC and Hexcel but also boasts a resurgent historic downtown built around two gems of the city’s park system — Walnut Springs Park and Central Park. Texas Lutheran University, a school honored regularly by U.S. News & World Report for both academic standards and value, calls Seguin home, while the award-winning Guadalupe Regional Medical Center offers top-notch medical care to the region.

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  The Lawton Constitution

  When John Shepler took over The Lawton Constitution in 1910, typewriters and hand-or-machine-set type were the standard. In 1955, when The Lawton Publishing Company moved to its new building at Southwest 3rd Street and A Avenue, the structure was filled with the most up-to-date machinery and equipment, including the latest Linotype machines with which an expert could set up to seven lines of type in one minute.

  Today, hardly a trace of the 1955 equipment remains. The typewriters have given way to computers, and Linotype machines to laser typesetters.

  Progress and staying on the leading edge of technology have always been a benchmark of the Lawton newspaper, the survivor of a fierce newspaper war that followed the birth of Lawton in 1901.

  Fifteen newspapers were started in the years after the 1901 lottery, but by the mid-1910s there were only two surviving daily newspapers - The Lawton Daily Constitution and the Lawton News.

  The Lawton Constitution was born in 1904 from a dispute of Lawton Democrats. One faction - hoping to capture the city and county printing contracts - set up its own newspaper by purchasing the weekly Elgin Eagle and moving the paper to Lawton, where it was renamed the Lawton Daily Constitution under the editorship of J. Roy Williams.

  In 1910, Williams sold the newspaper to John Shepler, a Missouri native who had published the weekly Milan Standard in Missouri for 18 years. He sold that newspaper in 1902 when he moved to Pawnee, Okla., and purchased two weeklies, the Courier and Dispatch, and merged them into the Courier-Dispatch. He sold the Pawnee Newspaper in 1909 and worked as a sales superintendent of state school lands and in the real estate and stock exchange business before purchasing the Constitution.

  John Shepler died in 1919 and his two sons, Ned and Fred, became co-publishers. In 1923, the Sheplers purchased the Lawton News and changed it into a weekly paper.

  Throughout its history, the Constitution has been a family tradition. Ned Shepler became sole publisher in 1942 after the death of his brother, Fred, and continued as publisher until 1967. Ned Shepler's daughter, Shirley, married the late Bill F. Bentley, who served as editor-publisher from 1967 to 1989. The Bentleys' two sons, Steve Bentley and Don Bentley, served as co-publishers until 2012.

  In March of 2012, the Bentley brothers sold The Constitution to another set of native Lawton brothers, Bill W. Burgess, Jr. and Brad W. Burgess. The sell to the Burgess brothers insured that the newspaper will remain locally owned.

  "We think it is important that the voice of any community, the newspaper, remain locally owned,” Bill Burgess said. "All too often we’ve seen what happens when major corporations purchase the local newspaper. There is a tendency for the paper to lose a certain amount of local flavor. We just couldn’t let that happen to Southwest Oklahoma,” Burgess said.