The Portsmouth Herald
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner(s) | Local Media Group |
| Publisher | John Tabor |
| Editor | Howard Altschiller |
| Founded | September 23, 1884, as The Penny Post |
| Headquarters | 111 New Hampshire Avenue, Portsmouth, New Hampshire 03801, United States |
| Circulation | 9,636 daily 13,623 Sundays in 2012 |
| ISSN | 0746-6218 |
| Website | seacoastonline.com |
The Portsmouth Herald (and Seacoast Sunday) is a seven-day daily newspaper serving greater Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Its coverage area also includes the municipalities of Greenland, New Castle, Newington and Rye, New Hampshire; and Eliot, Kittery, Kittery Point and South Berwick, Maine.
Unlike most New England daily newspapers, The Herald's circulation grew in the 2000s. Its editors in 2001 credited the newspaper's resurgence with the introduction of the "Wow! factor" -- front-page stories on controversial or sensational topics that appeal to younger readers.
The Portsmouth Herald considers its foundation date to be September 23, 1884, the day that its predecessor The Penny Post first appeared in Portsmouth. The Penny Post (named for its newsstand price) within two years was claiming to have the largest circulation base in New England. The Post adopted the name Portsmouth Herald in mid-1897, and cost 2 cents per issue.
Traced back through the history of its sister papers, however, the Herald has an even longer pedigree. In 1891, F.W. Hartford took over The Penny Post and initiated a newspaper war with two of the city's longest established papers, the Morning Chronicle (daily since 1852) and the weekly New Hampshire Gazette (the state's oldest newspaper, established October 7, 1756). He eventually bought out his rivals, and announced on April 5, 1898, that he had taken control of the Chronicle and Gazette.
Hartford continued to publish the Morning Chronicle as the morning counterpart to the evening Herald until his death in 1938; he and his son J.D. Hartford kept The New Hampshire Gazette in print as the weekend edition of the Herald, partially out of pride in being associated with "the nation's oldest newspaper". Even after the Herald's Sunday paper was renamed in the 1960s, the slogan "Continuing the tradition of the N.H. Gazette" continued to appear on the front page.
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