Type | Daily newspaper |
---|---|
Owner(s) | Alta Newspaper Group |
General manager | Brian Hancock |
News editor | Randy Jensen, Cameron Yoos |
Sports editor | Dylan Purcell |
Founded | 1905, as Lethbridge Weekly Herald |
Headquarters | 504 7th Street South Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada T1J 3Z7 |
Circulation | 15,742 weekdays 15,444 Saturdays 13,794 Sundays in 2011 |
Sister newspapers | Medicine Hat News |
ISSN | 0839-4938 |
Website | lethbridgeherald.com |
The Lethbridge Herald is the leading daily newspaper in greater Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. It is owned by Alta Newspaper Group and also publishes and distributes a weekly newspaper, the Lethbridge Sun Times.
On 8 November 1905, Fred E. Simpson and A.S. Bennett, both from Cranbrook, British Columbia, published the first issue of the Lethbridge Weekly Herald. The paper started in a building on what is now Fifth Street South.
Shortly after the launch of the Weekly Herald, William Ashbury Buchanan bought a half interest in the paper, and by the end of 1906 was its sole owner. Buchanan came from a newspaper career in Ontario and managed a staff of six and circulation of 300 within the first year. On 11 December 1907, he had introduced a daily paper titled the Lethbridge Daily Herald. The weekly continued as a separate paper until 1950.
Buchanan, like Bennett and Simpson before him, used the Herald to trumpet his belief in Lethbridge's potential as a commercial centre. In 1925, at the age of 49, he was named to the Canadian Senate, and remained both senator and publisher for the next 29 years, dividing his time between Ottawa and Lethbridge.
Through the 1930s, all employees at the Lethbridge Herald took a pay cut of equal percentage. One year, the profits of the Herald amounted to only $138. During the Second World War, 15 of the Herald employees left for military service.
In 1909, Buchanan had moved the paper to a location near Sixth Street and Third Avenue South. On 23 May 1952, Buchanan moved the Lethbridge Daily Herald to its current location on Seventh Street South, a location that had double the amount of floor space as the previous building.
Buchanan died in 1954, and his son, Hugh Buchanan, took over as owner of the paper.
Hugh Buchanan remained owner until he sold the paper in 1959 to F.P. Publications. In 1980, Thomson Newspapers bought F.P. Publications, and in September 2000, sold the Herald to Horizon Publications Inc.