The Monterey County Herald


The Monterey County Herald, sometimes referred to as the Monterey Herald, is a daily newspaper published in Monterey, California that serves Monterey County. It is owned by Media News Group.

History

In June 1922, The Monterey County Herald was first published. It was founded by Colonel R. Allen Griffin, a highly decorated infantry captain who fought in France during World War II. He bought Monterey Cypress American and consolidated it with his paper, later renamed The Monterey Peninsula Herald. Allen was an alumnus of Stanford University who returned to the military during World War II. He served as deputy chief of the ECA China Mission and set up the first United States operation on Formosa after the collapse of Free China.
In 1949, Edward Kennedy was hired as the Herald's editor-in-chief. Kennedy, as an Associated Press correspondent, had won celebrity, and considerable criticism, in the closing days of World War II by announcing Germany's surrender one day before that announcement was supposed to have been made. A small monument in Monterey memorializes him for having given the world an extra day of peace. He died in 1963 after a car hit him
In 1967, the Herald was acquired by Blade Communications, owner of the Toledo Blade. At that time the paper had a circulation of 30,000. Allen retired three years later. In 1992, the paper was acquired by the E.W. Scripps Company in exchange for the Pittsburgh Press, which Blade merged into its own Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Scripps traded the paper, along with The [San Luis Obispo Tribune], to Knight Ridder in 1997, in exchange for the Boulder Daily Camera. Following the deal, Knight Ridder fired all Herald employees and required those who wanted their jobs back to reapply. The paper's union members protested in response.
In 2006, the McClatchy Company purchased Knight Ridder in a deal valued at $4.5 billion. The deal was contingent on McClatchy selling off 12 of the 32 newspapers it had just purchased, including The Monterey County Herald. MediaNews Group, headed by William Dean Singleton, purchased four of the "orphan 12", including the Herald, the Contra Costa Times and San Jose Mercury News, for $1 billion.
In December 2013, MediaNews Group and 21st Century Media merged to create a new company operating under the name of its parent company, Digital First Media. In the year to come, the paper underwent a "reorganization plan" which included a redesign of both the newspaper and website, the move of newspaper production out-of-area, as well as a change in editor.