''The Huntsville Item'' is a five-day morning

daily 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 ...

published in

Huntsville, Texas Huntsville is a city in and the county seat of Walker County, Texas. The population was 45,941 as of the 2020 census. It is the center of the Huntsville micropolitan area. Huntsville is in the East Texas Piney Woods on Interstate 45 and home ...

, covering Walker County in

East Texas East Texas is a broadly defined cultural, geographic, and ecological region in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Texas that comprises most of 41 counties. It is primarily divided into Northeast and Southeast Texas. Most of the region cons ...

. It is owned by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. ''The Item'''s presses also print two college newspapers, '' The Battalion'' of

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

, and '' The Houstonian'' of Sam Houston State University. Being located in Huntsville, the location of Texas' execution chamber, ''The Item'' is one of two news organizations that (by order of the

Texas Department of Criminal Justice The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is a department of the government of the U.S. state of Texas. The TDCJ is responsible for statewide criminal justice for adult offenders, including managing offenders in state prisons, state jails ...

) has a reserved spot to report on executions held in Texas (the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...

is the other).Executive Directive on News Media Relations
"

. Retrieved on March 16, 2014. "C. A representative from the Associated Press (AP) and a representative from the Huntsville Item are guaranteed an opportunity to witness each execution." ''The Huntsville Item'' is the only newspaper that reports on all executions in Texas regardless of the county of conviction.

History

Founded in 1850, ''The Item'' reportedly is the second oldest continuously published newspaper in

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

. It has been headquartered across from the old Huntsville post office, on the banks of Town Creek, since the late 1960s.Itemonline.com: About Us
accessed January 20, 2007. The Woodall family sold the paper to Harte Hanks in the 1960s. Harte Hanks sold the paper to Media News Group in the early 1980s, which sold it to The Thomson Corporation in the late 1980s.

The Thomson Corporation The Thomson Corporation was one of the world's largest information companies. It was established in 1989 following a merger between International Thomson Organisation Ltd (ITOL) and Thomson Newspapers. In 2008, it purchased Reuters Group to fo ...

sold ''The Huntsville Item'', along with 11 other papers, to the American Publishing Company (later

Hollinger International Sun-Times Media Group (formerly Hollinger International) is a Chicago-based newspaper publisher. History Sun-Times Media Group was founded in 1986 under the name ''American Publishing Company'', as a holding company for Hollinger Inc.'s Americ ...

) in 1995. Hollinger sold off most of its small papers in 1999, and ''The Huntsville Item'' went to Community Newspaper Holdings.

References

External links

''Huntsville Item'' Website

CNHI Website
Huntsville Item Huntsville Item {{Texas-newspaper-stub 1850 establishments in Texas Newspapers established in 1850