''The Reporter'' is a 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 poli ...

based in

Fond du Lac, Wisconsin Fond du Lac () is a city in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, United States, and its county seat. It is located at the southern end of Lake Winnebago and had a population of 44,678 at the 2020 census. The city forms the core of the Fond du Lac met ...

owned by

Gannett Gannett Co., Inc. ( ) is an American mass media holding company headquartered in New York City. It is the largest U.S. newspaper publisher as measured by total daily circulation. It owns the national newspaper ''USA Today'', as well as several ...

. It serves primarily Fond du Lac and northern Dodge County in East Central

Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

History

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. This was the first paper to have a

telegraph line Electrical telegraphy is point-to-point distance communicating via sending electric signals over wire, a system primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most wide ...

in the Fond du Lac area, giving it a slight advantage over competing papers, with most eventually folding during the rest of the 19th and early 20th centuries. 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'' took ownership of

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting 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 rad ...

KFIZ, and launched the short-lived KFIZ-TV (channel 34) from 1970 until 1972. In 1970, the paper was sold to Thomson Newspapers, which 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. In 2000, Thomson sold their newspaper interests to

to concentrate on financial news and data. The additional press capacity was then used to print publications for nearby sister newspaper ''

The Sheboygan Press ''The Sheboygan Press'' is a daily newspaper based in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, United States. It is one of a number of newspapers in the state of Wisconsin owned by Gannett, including the ''Milwaukee Journal Sentinel'', '' Green Bay Press-Gazette'' ...

'', 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'', 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/ 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 counties surrounding the Appleton/Fox Cities area. History ''The Appleton Crescent'' was formed in ...

'', with the ''

Oshkosh Northwestern The ''Oshkosh Northwestern'' is a daily newspaper based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The ''Northwestern'' is primarily distributed in Winnebago, Waushara, and Green Lake counties. History For the forty years preceding establishment of the newspa ...

'' 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 and also the largest newspaper in the state of Wisconsin, where it is widely read. It was purchased by the G ...

'' 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''.

References

External links

Official Website

Official mobile version
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reporter (Fond du Lac, Wisconsin), The Newspapers established in 1870 Fond du Lac, Wisconsin Newspapers published in Wisconsin Gannett publications 1870 establishments in Wisconsin Daily newspapers published in the United States