The Morning Call

The Morning Call

The July 27, 2005 front page of The Morning Call
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner(s)	Tribune Company
Publisher	Timothy E. Ryan
Editor	David Erdman
Founded	1883 (as the Critic)
Headquarters	101 North 6th Street Allentown, Pennsylvania 18105, USA
Circulation	94,859 Daily 121,168 Sunday
Website	mcall.com

The Morning Call is a daily newspaper based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The newspaper is owned by Tribune Publishing, whose other publications include the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun.

The Morning Call serves a nine-county region of eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey and is the largest circulation newspaper of the Lehigh Valley, the third most populous region of Pennsylvania. It once ranked among the nation's top 100 largest-circulation newspapers, with circulation of 109,000 daily readers and 148,000 Sunday readers. As of October 2010, circulation is now 94,859 daily readers and 121,168 Sunday readers.

The Morning Call traces its beginnings to May 26, 1883, when Samuel S. Woolever started The Critic, a Saturday evening weekly.The Critic became a morning newspaper in late 1883, switched to a Sunday weekly a year later and resumed daily publication as the Daily Morning Critic in 1887. Woolever sold the Critic to a group of partners in 1894, and on January 1 of the following year, the paper appeared under the name The Morning Call for the first time.

David A. Miller, a reporter for the Critic, and his brother Samuel began investing in the newspaper around this time. By 1904, the two brothers had bought out the last of the original partners. In 1906, the Call joined the Associated Press, adding national and world news coverage to its pages. The early part of the century was a lively era for newspaper publishing. Besides the Call, Allentown's daily papers included the Daily City Item, Allentown Democrat and Chronicle and News, an evening newspaper that dated to 1870. Within a little more than a decade, the local newspaper scene would change considerably.

In 1920, Harry C. Trexler, the region’s top industrialist, put together an investors group to acquire The Call. Through a series of mergers, Allentown Call Publishing Co. was formed, leaving the Chronicle and News as the Call's primary rival. The next year, 1921, the newspaper began publishing a Sunday edition, the Sunday Morning Call. After Trexler's death in 1933, David Miller, who still held a financial interest in the paper, resumed control, along with two other partners. In 1935, the Call took over the Chronicle and News. Three years later, in 1938, the Sunday edition was renamed the Sunday Call-Chronicle, and the following year, the Chronicle and News became The Evening Chronicle.