Tallahassee Democrat
The December 1, 2008 front page of
Tallahassee Democrat |
|
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner(s) | Gannett Company |
| Publisher | Skip Foster |
| Founded | 1905 |
| Headquarters | 277 North Magnolia Drive Tallahassee, FL 32301  United States
|
| Circulation | 36,670 Daily |
| Website | Official Web Site |
The Tallahassee Democrat is a daily broadsheet newspaper. It covers the area centered on Tallahassee in Leon County, Florida, as well as adjacent Gadsden County, Jefferson County, and Wakulla County. The newspaper is owned by Gannett Co., Inc., which also owns the Pensacola News Journal, the Fort Myers News-Press, and Florida Today, along with many other news outlets.
Knight Newspapers bought the Tallahassee Democrat in 1965. The Democrat was acquired by Gannett in August 2005 in a newspaper swap with Knight Ridder.
The first issue of the Weekly True Democrat was published March 3, 1905. Founder, editor and publisher John G. Collins, a career printer and journalist, said the name came from the paper's promised dedication to "the true and tried principles of Old Time Democracy."
Three years later, in 1908, Collins contracted influenza and sold the newspaper to Milton Asbury Smith, an Alabama newspaperman and entrepreneur. Smith, an enthusiastic civic booster, operated the paper for 21 years. Smith guided the paper through a couple of name changes -- the Semi-Weekly True Democrat, 1912-1913; Weekly True Democrat, 1914-1915 -- and initiated the change to a daily newspaper. Smith published daily during 1913 biannual session of the Florida Legislature, then resumed daily publication during the 1915 legislative session. Smith converted the paper permanently into an afternoon daily newspaper after the 1915 session and the next year adopted the name, The Daily Democrat, 1916-1949.
In 1929, with Smith facing financial problems and threatening to close the newspaper, city fathers persuaded Col. Lloyd Griscom to purchase the newspaper. Griscom was a scion of a prominent New York family that owned a plantation covering much of northeast Leon County (Tallahassee) and he operated newspapers on Long Island. Griscom ran the newspaper mostly as an absentee owner, ceding most decisions to his protege and publisher, John "Jack" Tapers. Tapers oversaw the changing of the newspaper's name to the Tallahassee Democrat in 1949 and construction of a new building in 1952. Griscom died in 1959, and ownership passed to his widow, Audrey.
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