Bedford Gazette

The Bedford Gazette is an American daily newspaper serving Bedford, Pennsylvania, with a circulation of approximately 10,000 copies.[1] It is run by Sample News Group.[1]

Bedford Gazette
TypeDaily Newspaper
FormatBroadsheet
Owner(s)Sample News Group
Founder(s)Charles M'Dowell
PublisherJoseph A. Beegle
EditorPaul Rowan
Managing editorElizabeth Coyle
Founded1805 (1805)
LanguageEnglish
HeadquartersBedford, Pennsylvania
Circulation10,000
Websitewww.bedfordgazette.com

History

Launched as a Federalist weekly on September 21, 1805, its founder McDowell sold the paper in 1832, to George W. Bowman, a Jacksonian Democrat[2] who supported James Buchanan, a fellow Pennsylvanian Democrat.[3] Early on, the paper developed a reputation for fanning the flames of racial hatred. An article in 1837 claimed that free blacks, under the influence of Thaddeus Stevens, had broken into the voting polls, and threatened to shoot those trying to stop them from voting.[4][5] During the Civil War, they lamented that the Fugitive Slave Act was not being enforced in Pennsylvania.[6]

Bowman in turn sold the operation to Benjamin Franklin Meyers in August 1857. Myers, a disciple of Stephen Douglas and supporter of Buchanan, was hailed by his contemporaries as a gifted literary stylist with a "trenchant pen",[7] though more recent evaluations have noted that his vitriolic editorials and articles vilifying Lincoln and abolition "make for difficult reading today."[2] His reputation with Buchanan was such that when Buchanan was being pressured to run for President again in 1859, he chose to announce his rejection of those calls in a letter sent to the Gazette.[8]

In 1974, the paper made headlines when Representative Bud Schuster, who had been the target of a number of investigations by the Gazette, offered to buy paper, in what some saw as an attempt to silence reporting.[9]

In 2000, the paper was sold by the Frear family to the Sample family for an undisclosed sum.[10][11]

References
  1. "Bedford Gazette". Mondo Times. Mondo Times.
  2. "About The Bedford gazette". Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress.
  3. Davis, Jefferson (1989). The Papers of Jefferson Davis: 1856--1860. LSU Press. ISBN 9780807158760.
  4. Malone, Christopher (2012-09-10). Between Freedom and Bondage: Race, Party, and Voting Rights in the Antebellum North. Routledge. ISBN 9781135909529.
  5. Turner, Edward Raymond (1911). The Negro in Pennsylvania: Slavery--servitude--freedom, 1639-1861,. American historical association. p. 171. bedford gazette negro.
  6. Smith, David G. (2014-12-15). On the Edge of Freedom: The Fugitive Slave Issue in South Central Pennsylvania, 1820-1870. Fordham University Press. ISBN 9780823263974.
  7. Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Biography, of Pennsylvania ... Atlantic publishing & engraving Company. 1898.
  8. The Printers' Circular and Stationers' and Publishers' Gazette. R.S. Menanim. 1886.
  9. Anderson, Jack (25 October 1974). "The Public's Right to Know". The Daily Messenger.
  10. "Virginia Rymer Frear". Lancaster Eagle-Gazette. 16 April 2000.
  11. "Bedford Gazette sold to Pennsylvania publisher". Public Opinion. 8 March 2000.
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