The Corvallis Gazette-Times is a daily newspaper for Corvallis, Oregon, United States. The newspaper, along with its sister publication, the Albany Democrat-Herald of neighboring Albany, Oregon, is owned by Lee Enterprises of Davenport, Iowa.
The paper in its current form was created in 1909 as the result of the merger of two competing weekly newspapers, The Corvallis Gazette (established 1863), and The Corvallis Times (established 1888).
Starting June 27, 2023, the print edition of the Gazette-Times will be reduced to three days a week: Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Also, the newspaper will transition from being delivered by a traditional newspaper delivery carrier to mail delivery by the U.S. Postal Service.
History
Early Benton County newspapers
In 1854, during the political infighting over where to locate the seat of Oregon state government, Corvallis was briefly chosen by the legislature as state capital. As a result, pugnacious Democrat Asahel Bush, then serving as Territorial printer, moved his weekly Oregon Statesman from Salem to Corvallis to be close to legislative newsmakers. The tenure of the paper in Corvallis, like that of the state capital, was brief and fleeting and soon the town was left with no paper of its own.
Town founder Joseph C. Avery, himself a Democratic partisan, sought to fill the void with a new paper. He purchased press, type, and supplies and hired a small staff to launch a new publication called the Occidental Messenger in 1857. This short-lived publication was followed by a series of others which briefly glimmered and vanished like fireflies, including the Expositor, the Benton Democrat, and the Benton County Blade.
Two publications did manage to gain traction in Corvallis and Benton County, however — The Corvallis Gazette, a Republican paper established in December 1863, and the Benton Leader, a Democratic weekly, launched in 1882.
The Corvallis Gazette
The Corvallis Gazette was launched in December 1863, during the midst of the American Civil War by T. B. Odeneal. The paper was initially operated as a weekly, with publication taking place each Saturday. In February 1866, Odeneal was joined on the staff by William B. Carter, who assumed complete control of the paper in July of that same year, transforming it into an organ of the Oregon division of the International Organization of Good Templars.
Under Carter's editorship the Gazette became a leading voice for prohibition. This general orientation continued until March 1870, when a new ownership group took control of the paper, making Samuel L. Simpson the new editor of the paper. Simpson immediately noted the change in an editorial, writing:
Temperance ceases to be the speciality of this paper, as, in fact, it is not the forte of the present editor..... Right here the bright habiliments of neutrality are laid aside forever, and wheeling into line the good champion of prohibition goes down in the smoke and fury of political war.
This third iteration of the paper would become a vigorous partisan supporter of the agenda of the Republican Party. Carter would soon return to the editorial chair, with the paper's new political line unaltered.
In January 1876, the size of the Gazette was enlarged and in December of that same year the publication was made into a corporation, with editor William Carter one of the three incorporators. Carter's supremacy would end with his death in 1880, with fellow incorporator James A. Yantis taking over the operation of the publication until its eventual sale to M. S. Woodcock in May 1881.
In 1885, Corvallis pioneer Bushrod Washington Wilson and two other investors established the Gazette Publishing Company, which purchased the Corvallis Gazette from its previous publisher, M. S. Woodcock, on December 25. This holding company published the paper for only one year before selling the paper again, this time to Frank Conover.
Later editors of the paper included W. P. Keady, later Speaker of Oregon House of Representatives in the Oregon Legislative Assembly; Will H. Parry who later founded the Capital Journal in Salem, Oregon; and later Springer, who launched the Gazette's daily edition in 1909.
The Gazette was known briefly as a The Union Gazette following its 1899 merger with the Oregon Union which had been founded in 1897. The Union portion of the name was soon dropped. (A previous Corvallis newspaper called Union, published in the 1860s, was not affiliated. It was suppressed following the Civil War.)