''The Ledger'' is a daily newspaper serving Lakeland, Florida, and the Polk County area. The paper was founded on August 22, 1924, as the ''Lakeland Evening Ledger''. In 1927, it bought its main competitor, the morning ''Lakeland Star-Telegram''. By 1930, it was obvious that Lakeland could not support two papers, so Ledger Publishing Company merged the two papers into a single morning paper, the ''Lakeland Ledger and Star-Telegram''. In 1941, ''Star-Telegram'' was dropped from the masthead, and in 1967 the name was shortened to simply ''The Ledger''. The New York Times Company bought ''The Ledger'' in 1970 and owned it until 2012, when it sold its entire regional newspaper group to Halifax Media. In 2015, Halifax was acquired by New Media Investment Group. Jerome Ferson became publisher of the newspaper on July 30, 2007. Kevin Drake became publisher of the newspaper on January 21, 2014. In October 2016, Drake left ''The Ledger'' to return to his hometown of Spartanburg, South Carolina, to work as a group publisher for GateHouse Media. Brian Burns, former publisher of '' The Tampa Tribune'', joined ''The Ledger'' as publisher on January 25, 2017. He departed the newspaper July 25, 2019. No new publisher had been named as of October 2021.

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* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ledger, The Lakeland, Florida Newspapers published in Florida Daily newspapers published in the United States 1924 establishments in Florida Newspapers established in 1924 Gannett publications