''The Sacramento Union'' was a 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 a ...
founded in 1851 in
Sacramento, California
)
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, map_caption = Location within Sacramento C ...
. It was the oldest daily newspaper west of the Mississippi River before it closed its doors after 143 years in January 1994, no longer able to compete with ''
The Sacramento Bee
''The Sacramento Bee'' is a daily newspaper published in Sacramento, California, in the United States. Since its foundation in 1857, ''The Bee'' has become the largest newspaper in Sacramento, the fifth largest newspaper in California, and the 2 ...
'', which was founded in 1857, just six years after the ''Union''.
Founding
The birth of this storied newspaper institution began in 1851 when the city of
Sacramento
)
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, map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...
was in its infancy.
Under the direction of its first editor, Dr. John F. Morse, who had attracted proprietors through letters to the ''
New Orleans Delta
New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created.
New or NEW may refer to:
Music
* New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz (South Korean band), The Boyz
Albums and EPs
* New (album), ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartn ...
'' and well-known literary attainments, The ''Union'' was initially printed as ''The Daily Union'' on Wednesday, March 19, 1851. Upon the front page of this 23-inch by 34-inch paper, Morse addressed the readers of The ''Union'', committing to “publish the first news in the best style and at the lowest prices” and “to have an efficient correspondent in every important town and mining region in the state.”
The paper had evolved through the efforts of four ''Sacramento Transcript'' printers. The printers had introduced the idea of The ''Union''s creation a year earlier, due to their frustrations with a labor dispute between the ''Transcript'' and the ''Placer Times'', which were the city’s first two newspapers. The battle between these two newspapers became so fierce that the papers sold advertising space for below the cost of composition for the mere purpose of undercutting their competition.
Opening its operation at its 21 J St. headquarters, The ''Union'' endured very competitive times during its early years, when it was one of about 60 Sacramento newspapers.
Sacramento's status as a newspaper town, however, was short-lived, as all but two newspapers failed, leading to the ''Union''s famous slogan, “The Oldest Daily in the West”. The ''Union''s early years are also recognized for their famous contributors, who included
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...
,
Bret Harte
Bret Harte (; born Francis Brett Hart; August 25, 1836 – May 5, 1902) was an American short story writer and poet best remembered for short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of the California Gold Rush.
In a caree ...
and
Dan De Quille
William Wright (1829–1898), better known by the pen name Dan DeQuille or Dan De Quille, was an American author, journalist, and humorist. He was best known for his written accounts of the people, events, and silver mining operations on the Com ...
.
''The Daily Union'' evolved quite quickly as a leading newspaper, as its initial circulation of 500 was soon afterward expanded with an even wider circulation and the daily publication was joined by the semi-monthly ''Steamer Union'' (1851) for Atlantic states and European readers, the ''Weekly Union'' (1852), and the semi-annual ''Pictorial Union'' (1853), which featured drawings of towns, landscapes and other scenes of the era.
The ''Union'', which was often referred to as the “Miners’ Bible” during its early years, passed a major test when it overcame a great fire on November 2, 1852, and continued printing on a small press that was saved from the flames. A brick building, which still stands today, was later constructed at 121 J Street to replace the paper’s original building.
In 1852,
Thomas Gardiner, one of the founders of the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'', was publisher of the ''Union.''
["San Diego County," ''Los Angeles Times,'' June 11, 1899, page A-7]
''Access to this link may require the use of a library card.''
On November 17, 1858, The ''Union'' became the first California newspaper to issue a double-sheet daily. The publication was also recognized as the largest double-sheet daily in the nation.
The Sacramento Publishing Co. purchased the ''Sacramento Daily Union'', as it was then known, and the ''Daily Record'' in 1875, and merged them into one newspaper, calling it the ''Sacramento Daily Record-Union'' – a name that was later dropped.
Mark Twain and ''The Sacramento Union''
The Missouri-born
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has pr ...
, who is better known by his
pen name
A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name.
A pen na ...
of
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...
, is remembered most for his contributions to ''The Union''. This point was evident through the large bronze bust of Twain, which sat just west of the State Capitol in the lobby of The ''Union''’s latter building at 301 Capitol Mall.
Inscribed on the bust were Twain’s words: “Early in 1866, George Barnes invited me to resign my reportership on his paper, the ''San Francisco Morning Call'', and for some months thereafter, I was without money or work; then I had a pleasant turn of fortune. The proprietors of the ''Sacramento Union'', a great and influential daily journal, sent me to the
Sandwich Islands
The Hawaiian Islands ( haw, Nā Mokupuni o Hawai‘i) are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, and numerous smaller islets in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kur ...
to write four letters a month at twenty dollars a piece. I was there for four or five months, and returned to find myself about the best known man on the
Pacific Coast
Pacific coast may be used to reference any coastline that borders the Pacific Ocean.
Geography Americas
Countries on the western side of the Americas have a Pacific coast as their western or southwestern border, except for Panama, where the Pac ...
.”
Twain dispatched a series of articles on Hawaii for ''The Union'' in 1866. These were very popular, and many historians credit the series with turning Twain into a journalistic star. Because many people thought that Twain wrote in ''The Union'' building, whenever ''The Union'' was struggling financially during the turn of the 20th century, the owners would drag out an old desk and sell it for a princely sum as "the desk where Mark Twain sat."
Unfortunately, said Charlotte Gilmore, former head of ''The Union''s “morgue” or bound volumes collection, the original Twain articles were cut out and stolen from ''The Union''s bound volumes during the 1970s.
“Sometime after I left in the summer of 1971, it happened,” Gilmore said. “It’s a very disappointing situation, but at least the (Twain) articles were photographed (for
microfilm
Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either photographic film, films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the origin ...
) before this happened.”
The ''Union''s bound volumes, as well as the bronze bust of Twain, are now in the possession of the Shields Library at
UC Davis
The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...
, having been donated by the Danel and Reboin families, owners of the Herald Printing Co. The Twain articles can be viewed on microfilm at the Sacramento Public Library’s central location at 828 I St.
Late 20th century
In 1966, the paper was purchased by
Copley Press
Copley Press was a privately held newspaper business, founded in Illinois, but later based in La Jolla, California. Its flagship paper was ''The San Diego Union-Tribune''.
History
Founder Ira Clifton Copley launched Copley Press c. 1905, eventu ...
, which brought in millions of dollars that resulted in improvements such as the 1967 construction of the publication’s Capitol Mall headquarters and a new long-run, photo-offset press. During those years it was the dominant morning newspaper in Sacramento. Then, in the mid-1970s, the ''Bee,'' previously an afternoon newspaper, decided to go head-to-head with the ''Union'' as a morning newspaper and promised that the ''Bee'' would arrive on the doorstep by 6:00 a.m. The ''Union'' circulation department couldn't equal that service, and the ''Bee'' quickly became the larger of the two dailies. While the ''Bee'' had a much larger staff, the ''Union'' beat the ''Bee'' on a number of huge stories. Among them were the
Dorothea Puente
Dorothea Helen Puente (; January 9, 1929 – March 27, 2011) was an American convicted serial killer. In the 1980s, she ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California, and murdered various elderly and mentally disabled boarders before cashing th ...
Victorian grave sites and the investigative reporting that led to the resignation of
California Department of Education
The California Department of Education is an agency within the Government of California that oversees public education.
The department oversees funding and testing, and holds local educational agencies accountable for student achievement. Its st ...
Superintendent Bill Honig.
Copley sold the ''Union'' to conservative financier
Richard Mellon Scaife
Richard Mellon Scaife (; July 3, 1932 – July 4, 2014) was an American billionaire, a principal heir to the Mellon banking, oil, and aluminum fortune, and the owner and publisher of the ''Pittsburgh Tribune-Review''. In 2005, Scaife was n ...
in 1977. While there were reports that Scaife lost millions of dollars every year on the newspaper, he enjoyed having a conservative voice in the capital of the largest liberal state in the union. In the late 1980s, the newspaper changed from the standard
broadsheet
A broadsheet is the largest newspaper format and is characterized by long Vertical and horizontal, vertical pages, typically of . Other common newspaper formats include the smaller Berliner (format), Berliner and Tabloid (newspaper format), ta ...
size to a
tabloid, and the ''Union'' launched a marketing campaign called "Grab the Tab." For the most part, it was a failure and the paper suffered losses in circulation.
In 1989, Scaife sold the ''Union'' to local real estate developers Daniel Benvenuti Jr. and David Kassis. They hired
Joseph Farah
Joseph Francis Farah (born July 6, 1954) is an American author, journalist and editor-in-chief of the conservative website ''WorldNetDaily'' ''(WND)''.
Early years
Farah was born in Paterson, New Jersey, on July 6, 1954, to parents of Syrian ...
as editor. Under Farah's editorship, the paper veered even further to the right and became, in the words of a former ''Union'' journalist, "a mouthpiece for the fundamentalist Christian right, preoccupied with abortion, homosexuals and creationism." Benvenuti and Kassis sold the newspaper's press in 1991 to a Mexican town and had the paper printed at Herald Printing. In 1992, Herald's president Ralph Danel Jr. acquired the ''Union'' from Benvenuti and Kassis in November 1992; the selling price was in large part the debt that Benvenuti and Kassis owed Herald for its printing services.
The newspaper in 1991 and 1992 ran a series of investigative reports that revealed that then-state Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig had directed state education officials to contract with a company run by his wife, Nancy, out of their San Francisco home, that was designed to get parents more involved in their children's education. At Honig's direction, state funds were ultimately used to pay employees of Nancy Honig's company, the Quality Education Project (QEP). Bill Honig was later indicted and convicted on conflict-of-interest charges, although the felonies were later reduced to misdemeanors. Honig, who had been rumored to be a candidate for California governor, attributed the investigation to Republicans who didn't want him to win higher office.
In an attempt to reduce losses, circulation was dropped outside of the Sacramento metro area and, two months before its closure, publication was changed from seven days a week to three days a week. The formerly daily ''Union'' published its final edition on Friday, January 14, 1994. The cover featured a color photo of the paper's last staff under the blaring headline, "We're History," coined by the newspaper's last editor, Ken Harvey.
Revival attempts
2005: ''Sacramento Union Magazine''
The road to the rebirth of ''The Union'' in its newspaper form began in early 2004, when the name of the newspaper was acquired for the purpose of restarting the publication.
To meet its goals, the new ''Union'' set up offices in
Fair Oaks and worked with former ''Union'' publishing staff to prepare for its return.
In August 2004, a modernized ''Sacramento Union'' returned with bimonthly
magazine
A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combinatio ...
s, then started publishing monthly in May 2005.
James H. Smith, a former publisher of the ''Sacramento Union'' newspaper and co-founder of the
Western Journalism Center The Western Journalism Center (also called the Western Center for Journalism) was founded in 1991 by Joseph Farah and James H. Smith. Based in Sacramento, California. The center produces a conservative newsletter.
Projects
The Center helped fund ...
with Farah, served as publisher, and
Kenneth E. Grubbs Jr., former director of the
National Journalism Center
The National Journalism Center (NJC) is an American political organization established in 1977 by conservative journalist M. Stanton Evans. It runs programs and internships for journalism students to educate them on professional journalism, and c ...
who had also worked for the
Orange County Register
''The Orange County Register'' is a paid daily newspaper published in California. The ''Register'', published in Orange County, California, is owned by the private equity firm Alden Global Capital via its Digital Fiest/Media News subsidiaries. ...
, served as editor.
The publishers did not intend to return as a print daily newspaper, concentrating instead on web and magazine publishing.
Due to its very limited success, the magazine ceased existing after only five issues. Much of the office staff was laid off in May 2005.
[http://sacramento.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2005/05/30/story2.html ]
Ryan Rose, The ''Union''s current managing editor, served as the magazine's Web editor; he said that many people were confused upon seeing The ''Union'' as a magazine.
“We were known in this region for more than 100 years as a newspaper and then less than 10 years after The Union closed as a newspaper, we reissued it as a magazine and I firmly believe that the magazine suffered because we betrayed the brand,” Rose said.
After several months of dormancy, a new print edition of ''The Sacramento Union'' appeared on Friday, July 21, 2006, sporting a similar masthead as the magazine and the notation "Since 1851". The volume number in the paper was listed as "Volume 1, Number 1."
2006-2009: Tabloid
In 2006, ''The Sacramento Union'' was reborn as a
tabloid-sized free
weekly newspaper
A weekly newspaper is a general-news or Current affairs (news format), current affairs publication that is issued once or twice a week in a wide variety broadsheet, magazine, and electronic publishing, digital formats. Similarly, a biweekly new ...
from 2006 to 2009. Published by the Sacramento Union, LLC, the paper also published a daily news website. J.C. Dutra was ''The Union''s
publisher
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
and
editor-in-chief
An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies.
The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...
. The paper was conservative in tone.
The ''Sacramento Union'' suspended publication of both the paper and the website in March 2009.
The ''Sacramento Union'' was acquired along with 45 other newspapers across the United States by a holding company controlled by Bruce Edgar Slaton Jr. for an undisclosed price.
Newspaper building
In the autumn of 2005,
demolition
Demolition (also known as razing, cartage, and wrecking) is the science and engineering in safely and efficiently tearing down of buildings and other artificial structures. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a ...
crews razed the old daily ''Union'' office building, located at 301 Capitol Mall in downtown Sacramento. The building was constructed in 1967. (Earth Metrics Inc., 1989.) A 53-story
high-rise called "The
Towers on Capitol Mall
The Towers on Capitol Mall were two 53-story, 615 foot (187 m) mixed-use towers to be built in downtown Sacramento, California. The buildings (The Towers on Capitol Mall I & II) were planned to have 804 condominia, a 200 room InterContinental H ...
" was planned for the ''Unions previous spot, but by 2007, the developer was struggling to finance the project and plans were scrapped. The former location is currently fenced off and its future is unknown.
Archives
The archives of the daily ''Union'' are in the Special Collections of the Shields Library of
UC Davis
The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...
. California Digital Newspaper Collection has in its on-line archives the Sacramento Daily Union (Sacramento, 1851-1899).
Sacramento Public Library's holdings contain complete microfilm archives of ''The Sacramento Union'' from 1851 (founding) to January 1994 (when publication ceased) and are located at its Central Library.
References
*''Environmental Site Assessment for the Sacramento Union Building, 301 Capitol Building, Sacramento, Ca.'', Earth Metrics Inc., November 22, 1989
*Elisabeth Sherwin (2000)
The Sacramento Union rests in peace at Shields Retrieved January 25, 2006.
*
Salamone, Kathleen. ''Seceding from the Union: Kathleen Katanaka's explanation of why she left the "Sacramento Union."'' (
Columbia Journalism Review
The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (''CJR'') is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its contents include news and media industry trends, ana ...
, January/February 1991)
*
Farah, Joseph. ''Why the Liberal Press Is Out to Get Us."'' (
Columbia Journalism Review
The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (''CJR'') is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its contents include news and media industry trends, ana ...
, January/February 1991). A rebuttal of Salamon's article.
*"Sacramento Union shifts from six to three days a week," ''Editor & Publisher'', October 30, 1993.
*"Union's New Owner Plans to Turn Newspaper Around," ''The Business Journal-Sacramento'', November 9, 1992.
*"One of West's Oldest Newspapers Shutting Down," Associated Press, January 12, 1994.
External links
''Sacramento Union'' Newspaper Archivesa
Special Collections Dept. University Library, University of California, Davis
''Sacramento Union'' archives Sacramento Public Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sacramento Union, The
Companies based in Sacramento, California
Newspapers established in 1851
Publications disestablished in 1994
Defunct newspapers published in California
1851 establishments in California
1994 disestablishments in California