The July 15, 2015 front page of
The Post and Courier |
|
Type | Daily newspaper |
---|---|
Format | Broadsheet |
Owner(s) | Evening Post Industries |
Founded |
Charleston Courier 1803 Charleston Daily News-1865 News & Courier 1873 The Evening Post 1894 The Post and Courier 1991 |
Headquarters | 134 Columbus Street Charleston, SC 29403 United States |
Circulation | 83,483 Daily 90,168 Sunday (March 2013) |
Website | www |
The Post and Courier is the main daily newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina. It traces its ancestry to three newspapers, the Charleston Courier, founded in 1803, the Charleston Daily News, founded 1865, and The Evening Post, founded 1894. Through the Courier, it is the oldest daily newspaper in the South, and one of the oldest continuously operating newspapers in the United States. It is the flagship newspaper of the Evening Post Industries.
It is the largest newspaper in South Carolina, followed by Columbia's The State and The Greenville News.
The Charleston Courier, founded in 1803, and Charleston Daily News, founded in 1865, merged to form the News and Courier in 1873. In 1926, The News and Courier was bought by the owners of Charleston's main evening paper, The Evening Post. By 1991, it was apparent Charleston could no longer support two newspapers, so the News and Courier and Evening Post were merged into a single morning newspaper, The Post and Courier. However, the two papers had shared the same editorial staff since the 1980s.
The founder of the Courier, Aaron Smith Willington, came from Massachusetts with newspaper experience. In the early 19th century, he was known to row out to meet ships from London, Liverpool, Havre, and New York City to get the news earlier than other Charleston papers. He also had a translator working for him, so he could copy items from the Havana newspapers. Rudolph Septimus Siegling also served as editor during the 1800s.
The paper acquired several sisters in the 1990s when its parent bought other newspapers and television stations.
In 2008, the newspaper won national awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and American Society of Newspaper Editors for coverage of the Charleston Sofa Super Store fire. In 2008, Reporter Tony Bartelme also won the prestigious Gerald Loeb Award for a story about the effect of China's growth on local economies. In 2015 it won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of domestic violence.