The ''Bristol Herald Courier'' is a 39,000 circulation daily

newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as p ...

owned by

Lee Enterprises Lee Enterprises, Inc. is a publicly traded American media company. It publishes 77 daily newspapers in 26 states, and more than 350 weekly, classified, and specialty publications. Lee Enterprises was founded in 1890 by Alfred Wilson Lee and is b ...

. The newspaper is located in Bristol, Virginia, a small city located in

Southwest Virginia Southwest Virginia, often abbreviated as SWVA, is a mountainous region of Virginia in the westernmost part of the commonwealth. Located within the broader region of western Virginia, Southwest Virginia has been defined alternatively as all Virg ...

on the

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

border. The ''Herald Courier'' is in what the media industry calls a converged newsroom, meaning its online
heraldcourier.com
print (''Herald Courier'') and broadcast ( WJHL-Johnson City) operations work together closely. ''Herald Courier'' reporters are trained to occasionally deliver webcasts of Bristol news, conduct TV "talk-backs" with WJHL and gather audio for daily stories. News Channel 11 reporters often have bylined stories that appear in the ''Herald Courier'' news pages. Under Media General, both operations provided content for TriCities.com, a subsidiary of Media General's Digital Media Department. The future of the website is said to be up in the air. In 2010, the ''Herald Courier'' won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, the highest honor in American journalism, for "illuminating the murky mismanagement of natural-gas royalties owed to thousands of land owners in southwest Virginia, spurring remedial action by state lawmakers."

History

The beginning of the present ''Bristol Herald Courier'' came in August 1865. That was when John Slack founded the ''Bristol News'', a publication which continued until after the turn of the century. In 1870, Slack launched the ''Bristol Courier'', a weekly which became Bristol's first daily paper in 1888. George L. Carter, founder of the Clinchfield Railroad, moved to Bristol in 1903 and founded the ''Bristol Herald''. When Carter left Bristol in 1907 the ''Herald'' was combined with the ''Courier'' and became the ''Bristol Herald Courier''. The 1934

Carter Family Carter Family was a traditional American folk music group that recorded between 1927 and 1956. Their music had a profound impact on bluegrass, country, Southern Gospel, pop and rock musicians as well as on the U.S. folk revival of the 1960s. ...

song "It'll Aggravate Your Soul" mentions the newspaper. On October 16, 1949, T. Eugene Worrell and a number of the city's leading businessmen launched the ''Bristol Virginia-Tennessean'', first published in direct competition with the ''Herald Courier'' and the evening ''News Bulletin''. After many months of intense rivalry, the ''Herald Courier'' and ''Virginia-Tennessean'' joined in a printing agreement allowing both to carry on competitively in news and editorial fields while enjoying economies afforded by joint operations. In 1986, after 36 years of home deliveries, the ''Bristol Virginia-Tennessean'' succumbed to the trend of dying afternoon newspapers and was combined with the morning editions of the ''Bristol Herald Courier''. The combined morning publication with three editions covered and circulated in nine Southwest Virginia counties, Upper East Tennessee and the City of Bristol. January 1, 1998 marked the sale of the ''Bristol Herald Courier ''to Media General. It was sold to

Berkshire Hathaway Berkshire Hathaway Inc. () is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Its main business and source of capital is insurance, from which it invests the float (the retained premiu ...

in 2012. Under the new ownership of Berkshire Hathaway, Bristol Herald Courier has rebranded its online presence moving from "tricities.com" to "heraldcourier.com". The newspaper now operates only in print and online, and is no longer affiliated with the TV station WJHL.

Newsroom staff

The ''Bristol Herald Courier'' is located at 320 Bob Morrison Blvd in Bristol, Va. The ''BHC'' is the dominant news source for the Bristol and Southwest Virginia region and in 2008 and 2009 won five national journalism awards, including four from the Associated Press Sports Editors and one from the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association. The paper was a 2007 national finalist for online convergence by the Associated Press Managing Editors. In 2018, it was chosen as one of three finalists for the 2017 annual award in the

Scripps Howard Foundation The Scripps Howard Fund is a public charity that supports philanthropic causes important to the E. W. Scripps Company, an American media conglomerate which owns television stations, cable television networks, and other media outlets. The goal of ...

's Community Journalism category, for its feature, “Addicted at Birth.” It won the Scripps Howard Community Journalism award. The judges' comments included: "The newspaper, with a circulation of 16,500, investigated the problem from all angles, outlined solutions and educated the community. The impact is wide-ranging for taxpayers, hospitals, families and schools." "It not only reported what's happening but foreshadowed what the community could face in the future."Scripps Howard Awards announce winners of top prizes, $170,000 in prize money
'' PR Newswire'', March 6, 2018. Retrieved May 7, 2018.

References

External links

* * {{authority control Herald Courier Daily newspapers published in Virginia Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers Publications established in 1865 1865 establishments in Virginia Pulitzer Prize for Public Service winners Lee Enterprises publications