newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written 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 politics, business, sports a ...
based in
Fond du Lac, Wisconsin
Fond du Lac () is a city in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 44,678 at the 2020 census. The city forms the core of the United States Census Bureau's Fond du Lac United States metrop ...
owned by
Gannett
Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.Dodge County in East Central
Wisconsin
Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
.
The ''Reporter'' traces its founding to August 22, 1870 when the ''Fond du Lac Commonwealth'', which had been a weekly newspaper since 1856, began daily circulation. However, the first incarnation of the ''Fond du Lac Daily Reporter'' did not start until 1883, when L. A. Lange founded a new newspaper for Fond du Lac to compete with the ''Commonwealth'', publishing Monday through Saturday. His was the first paper to have a telegraph line in the Fond du Lac area, giving a slight advantage over competing papers, with most eventually folding during the rest of the 19th and early 20th century.
In 1917, L. A. Lange was succeeded by his son A. H. Lange, as publisher of the ''Daily Reporter'', beginning a tradition of Lange family involvement with operations throughout the rest of the 20th century.
In 1926 the ''Fond du Lac Daily Commonwealth'' and ''Fond du Lac Daily Reporter'' merged to become the ''Fond du Lac Commonwealth Reporter''. Its offices and presses were located at 18 West First Street. It would continue to be known as such until the 1970s, when "Commonwealth" was dropped from the
nameplate
A nameplate identifies and displays a person or product's name. Nameplates are usually shaped as rectangles but are also seen in other shapes, sometimes taking on the shape of someone's written name. Nameplates primarily serve an informat ...
. In the mid-1920s, the ''Commonwealth Reporter'' came into ownership of
radio station
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...
KFIZ, and would launch the short-lived KFIZ-TV (channel 34) from 1970 until 1972.
In 1970, the paper was sold to Thomson Newspapers, who erected a new building at the corner of West Second and Macy Streets in Fond du Lac. It was also during this time that the Saturday evening edition of the paper was switched to a Sunday morning delivery.
In 1998 and 1999 a nearly addition was added to the present building to increase printing operations, and in 2000, Thomson sold their newspaper interests to
Gannett
Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.The Sheboygan Press'', after that publication's older presses at their Sheboygan facilities broke down in mid-1998, and were judged to be too obsolete to repair.
Gannett eventually downsized their Fond du Lac operations upon the 2009 purchase of the parent company of ''
Action Advertiser Action Advertiser, originally Action Advertising Co. and now officially known as Action Publications, is a newspaper based out of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin which features only "good news" along with retail, display and classified advertising. All Acti ...
'', a local shopper paper which also did contract publishing, moving out of downtown to an expansion of the ''Action Advertiser'' offices near the
I-41
Interstate 41 (I-41) is a north–south Interstate Highway connecting the interchange of I-94 and U.S. Route 41 (US 41), located south of the Wisconsin–Illinois border at the end of the Tri-State Tollway in metropolitan Ch ...
/ WI 23 interchange on September 20, 2009. This necessitated the move of ''The Reporter'' from publishing in-house to out of Gannett's Appleton facilities for the ''
Post-Crescent
''The Post-Crescent'' is a daily newspaper based in Appleton, Wisconsin. Part of the Gannett chain of newspapers, it is primarily distributed in numerous counties surrounding the Appleton/Fox Cities area.
History
''The Appleton Crescent'' was f ...
'', with the ''
Oshkosh Northwestern
The ''Oshkosh Northwestern'' is a daily newspaper based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
The ''Northwestern'' was owned by the Schwalm and Heaney families until 1998, when it was sold to Ogden Newspapers; Ogden traded the paper to Thomson Newspapers two ...
'' also following suit. Publication of ''Sheboygan Press'' subsequently moved to Milwaukee under a contract with the ''
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The ''Milwaukee Journal Sentinel'' is a daily morning broadsheet printed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where it is the primary newspaper. It is also the largest newspaper in the state of Wisconsin, where it is widely distributed. It is currently o ...
'' until 2014, when ''Press'' publications were also printed out of Appleton (Gannett purchased the ''Journal Sentinel'' in April 2016; that latter paper now publishes all state Gannett publications as of the spring of 2018 when the Appleton printing facility was made redundant and closed down, including ''The Reporter'').
As of 2015, the operations of ''Action Advertiser'' and ''The Reporter'' are branded together as ''Action Reporter Media''.