Six different newspapers called the Detroit Times have been published in the city of Detroit; the most recent existed for six decades, from 1900 to 1960.
Overview
The first iteration of the Detroit Times was an antislavery bulletin only printed from May to November 1842 by Warren Isham. The second iteration began in November 1854. Published by G.S. Conklin and E.T. Sherlock, with John N. Ingersoll as editor. The paper was purchased that same month by Ingersoll and Tenny, and sold again in December 1855, to an association of journeyman printers, who published the paper until the spring of 1856. The third version was established in April 1881; it was likely discontinued before the end of 1881 after being bought by The Sunday Herald. The fourth Detroit Times, a daily and Sunday, was printed from December 4, 1883 to February 26, 1885 at 47 West Larned Street and was run by a stock company. The paper's managers were Charles Moore, Charles M. Parker, D. J. McDonald and Frank E. Robinson. A fire on the morning of April 11, 1884 completely destroyed the printing plant; with the assistance of the other Detroit printing establishments, the edition was printed without interruption. Lloyd Breeze purchased the paper November 22, 1884; the paper was suspended on February 26, 1885. Five years later, James E. Scripps, owner of The Detroit News, set out to prove a point: he started the fifth version of the Detroit Times and sold it for a penny a copy. After printing it for 18 months and proving he could make a profit selling a newspaper for a penny, Scripps merged the Times into the News.
Sixth and final version
The sixth and most recent version (to date) of the Detroit Times was published as an evening paper from 1900 until November 6, 1960. The Times was brought back to life by James Schermerhorn October 1, 1900 as Detroit Today but quickly changed its name to the Evening Times. The paper was purchased, after the property having been placed in the hands of a receiver, by William Randolph Hearst in the later part of 1921.
At the time Hearst purchased the Times it was located at 131 Bagley Street; Hearst wasted no time working out plans for a new state-of-the-art printing plant. With the backing of Hearst, who dispatched famed editor Arthur Brisbane to Detroit to kickstart the new management, the Times became the fastest-growing paper in the city, rivaling The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press in the great Detroit newspaper war. The Times hit its highest circulation in 1951, with an average daily high of 438,757 papers sold.
But the 1950s were not kind to the newspaper business, and the Times''' circulation numbers slipped to about 400,000 copies sold daily by 1960. Rumors of a sale of the Times had been circulating for weeks, then on the evening of Sunday, November 6th, 1960, Newsweek magazine broke the story with the headline,"One Out In Detroit," explaining that Hearst's "limping" paper had been sold to The Evening News Association, owner of its "independently owned, well-heeled competitor," The Detroit News. Reports of the sale also appeared that evening on Detroit radio station WXYZ (now WXYT) as well as in the early "bulldog" edition of the Detroit Free Press.
The Free Press reported at the time that only one person at the Times, General Manager William H. Mills, knew of the imminence of the sale, and that H.G. Kern, General Manager of the Hearst chain, had informed Mills of the completion of the sale as early as Friday, November 4, instructing him to only inform the employees on Monday morning.