Ashland Times-Gazette

About Ashland Times-Gazette

The Ashland Times-Gazette is the daily newspaper of Ashland, Ohio, and the principal news voice of Ashland County in north-central Ohio. Published continuously since its current name was formed by the merger of the Ashland Times and the Ashland Gazette in 1903, it is today part of the Gannett-owned USA TODAY Network, the largest newspaper group in the United States. Its newsroom covers a county of roughly 52,500 residents, with a core focus on Ashland city, the county's smaller villages and townships, its schools, its farmland economy, and the rhythms of small-town civic life. Alongside the print edition, the paper publishes around the clock on times-gazette.com, with a digital replica eEdition and a mobile app extending its reach beyond the delivery truck. Like many community dailies, it has shrunk in staffing and sold off its downtown building in recent years, yet it remains Ashland County's only daily newspaper of record and the outlet where county government actions, school board decisions, high school sports, and obituaries are documented for posterity.

History

Newspapers have been published in Ashland County almost as long as the county itself has existed. The county was formed in 1846, and by 1834 the Mohican Advocate and Hanover Journal was being printed in Loudonville, though it lasted only six issues. Early papers in the city of Ashland tended to be short-lived and openly partisan, launched by men who backed one political faction or another and folded when their money or their enthusiasm ran out. The lineage that survives as the Times-Gazette began with The Ashlander, founded in 1850, which was bought in 1852 by L. Jeff Sprengle, who renamed it the Ashland Times in 1853. The Times was the first newspaper between Cleveland and Columbus to be printed on a steam-powered Hoe press, an early sign of the ambition of Ashland's publishers. Its rival and eventual partner, the Gazette, was founded in 1887 by Thomas M. Beer, C.D. Mason and O.F. Crall. The Gazette became a daily publication in 1901, and in 1903 the Times and the Gazette merged to form the Times-Gazette, a name it has carried for more than 120 years.

The merged paper remained a family enterprise for decades. In 1919, Beer's sons Frank and Harry joined with George Hildebrand and Edgar Koehl to form the Ashland Printing Company, consolidating the family's holdings around the Times-Gazette. The Beer and Koehl families operated the paper through the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, and it was they who built the paper's landmark home at 40 East Second Street in 1931, a building designed to be durable and expandable that was enlarged in 1936 and again in 1954 to accommodate new presses. Before that, the paper had moved in 1913 from the Ashland Press Building at Third and Orange streets to the Krichbaum Building at Second and Orange. Production milestones followed the industry's arc: a Duplex Tubular press replaced the old Cox press in 1921, an offset press arrived in 1972, and the paper switched from afternoon publication with a 2 p.m. press time to a morning paper with a midnight press time in 1996. One of its longest-serving journalists, Mel McKeachie, joined as a courthouse reporter in 1960, later became managing editor, and retired in 1997 after 35 years with the organization.

In October 1965 the Beer and Koehl families sold the Times-Gazette to Dix Communications, the Wooster-based company owned by the Dix family, which had been in the newspaper business since the late 1800s. Under Dix ownership the paper continued to grow: in 2000 its printing was moved to the Wooster Daily Record, and in 2004 to a joint printing facility, while the interior of the Ashland building was completely renovated that same year and the newsroom moved to more spacious quarters. The staff of that era was unusually large for a small-town daily, with five news reporters, three sports writers, two photographers, three copy editors, a newsroom clerk, a news editor, and an editor and general manager. Ted Daniels, a Loudonville native who had interned at the paper in 1974 and later spent 24 years at the Indianapolis Star, returned to take the helm as editor and general manager in 2002 and led the paper until his retirement in August 2019, apart from a brief stint at the Mansfield News Journal in 2016 and 2017.

Ownership and leadership

The Times-Gazette's ownership chain reflects the consolidation of the American newspaper industry over the past decade. After the Dix family's long tenure, GateHouse Media agreed in January 2017 to purchase the newspaper division of Dix Communications, a deal that included the Times-Gazette, the Wooster Daily Record, and the Loudonville Times. Two years later, in August 2019, GateHouse merged with Gannett, the McLean, Virginia-based publisher of USA Today and the country's largest newspaper chain. The paper is therefore now a property of Gannett, which operates its local titles under the USA TODAY Network banner. General Manager Aaron Bass was the paper's senior local executive at the time the company sold its historic East Second Street building in 2021. Before him, Ted Daniels served as editor and general manager from 2002 to 2019. No verified current publisher or editor name was found in public sources at the time of research; like many Gannett community papers, the newsroom now operates within a regional management structure, with the paper's general manager having publicly managed the 2021 building sale and the remote-work transition. A 2004 snapshot of the newsroom showed a robust local staff, but like the rest of the chain, the paper has since reduced headcount as print revenues have fallen.

Editorial approach

The Times-Gazette's editorial approach is that of a classic community daily: intensely local in its reporting while drawing on the resources of its corporate network for everything beyond the county line. Longtime staffers described the paper's responsibility as mirroring the community's happenings, a mission it applied to school district consolidations, the opening and closing of industries, highway construction such as the U.S. 250 bypass and the widening of Route 30, and Ashland College's growth into Ashland University. Former editor Ted Daniels noted the advantages of pooled resources under Gannett ownership: readers get statehouse reporting from the Columbus Dispatch and the Cincinnati Enquirer and professional sports coverage from the Akron Beacon Journal, layered on top of the paper's own local reporting. The staff, working remotely since the coronavirus pandemic, has said it remains engaged in the community and committed to both a daily print newspaper and continuous online publishing. Letters to the editor continue to be solicited as a channel for public opinion, a traditional forum the paper has maintained through its digital transition.

Coverage and regular sections

Coverage centers on Ashland County government, municipal affairs, education, and sports, with particular attention to the county's many school districts and their athletics. The paper also carries farm news, a natural fit for a county where cropland and pasture still cover well over half the land area. Obituaries form one of the paper's most-read sections and are managed through a dedicated desk. Classified advertising covers automobiles, real estate, employment, and garage sales, and the paper carries legal notices as one of Ashland County's newspapers of general circulation, publishing official public notices such as those required for Ohio EPA actions in the county. The entertainment and lifestyle sections cover books, dining, movies, and community events, while the news pages track business development, crime and courts, and regional issues. Seasonal and community traditions are a staple, from county fair coverage to annual rundowns of trick-or-treat times in each Ashland County community.

Readership and circulation

The Times-Gazette is Ashland County's only daily newspaper, serving a county whose population was 52,447 in the 2020 census and was estimated at 52,523 in the Census Bureau's July 2025 estimates. The county seat and largest city is Ashland itself, home to about 19,225 residents in 2020, with the remainder spread across villages such as Loudonville, Jeromesville, and Perrysville, and across agricultural townships. The paper's readership is concentrated among long-established local households, with a high homeownership rate and an aging demographic profile typical of rural Ohio. No current, publicly verified circulation figure could be found during research; Gannett no longer publishes per-title circulation in the fashion it once did. A third-party advertising database estimated daily circulation at roughly 12,000, but that figure dates from the Dix Communications era and cannot be taken as current. What is verifiable is the paper's market position: it faces no direct daily print competitor within Ashland County, and its digital audience extends to former residents and the broader north-central Ohio region through its website and eEdition.

Print edition and distribution

The Times-Gazette publishes as a morning newspaper, a format it adopted in 1996 after many years as an afternoon paper. The edition is produced as a broadsheet and printed off-site: production moved first to the Wooster Daily Record in 2000 and later to a joint printing facility, part of the chain-wide consolidation of press operations that left the Ashland building's presses silent. Delivery follows the industry's prevailing pattern of postal and carrier delivery to subscribers, with single copies available at newsstands and local businesses. The paper is the official general-circulation newspaper for its market, carrying the legal notices and public advertisements that by Ohio law must appear in print. The company notes that premium special editions are occasionally published and billed to subscribers as part of subscription terms, a common Gannett practice across its Ohio titles.

Digital presence

The paper's website, times-gazette.com, operates as a continuously updated local news portal, which management described in 2021 as a 24/7 news operation with stories, photos, and video published as news happens. The site mirrors the standard USA TODAY Network template shared by Gannett's Ohio papers, blending locally produced stories with network content from USA Today and sister papers. The Ashland Times Gazette eEdition is an exact digital replica of the printed newspaper, allowing readers to page through the edition as it appeared in print, and the paper offers a mobile app with access to its journalism and local events content. The paper maintains social media profiles on Facebook and X, and a LinkedIn company page, and former editors have noted that reporters now publish news, photos, and video across social platforms from the field. Contact channels are organized by department: news, sports, letters to the editor, obituaries, classified advertising, and circulation and billing, each with its own dedicated email address. An RSS feed of the site's content is also available.

Sister media concerns

The Times-Gazette arrived at Gannett alongside the two other Dix Communications newspaper properties acquired by GateHouse in 2017: the Daily Record of Wooster, the larger daily in neighboring Wayne County, and the Loudonville Times, the weekly paper serving the southern tier of Ashland County, including the Mohican resort area. Within Gannett's Ohio footprint the paper shares content and resources with a large group of sister papers, including the Akron Beacon Journal, the Columbus Dispatch, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Canton Repository, the Mansfield News Journal, and the Coshocton Tribune, among others. This network relationship was explicitly cited by the paper's former editor as a benefit to readers, who gain access to the Dispatch's statehouse reporting, the Enquirer's regional coverage, and the Beacon Journal's professional sports coverage. The sister papers also serve as operational backstops: the Wooster Daily Record has printed the Times-Gazette's editions, and customer service, circulation, and advertising functions are organized across the regional group rather than housed solely in Ashland.

Challenges and outlook

The Times-Gazette faces the same structural pressures as nearly every American community newspaper: declining print circulation and advertising revenue, a transition to digital subscriptions, and the hollowing out of local newsrooms. The 2021 sale of its 1931 headquarters building at 40 East Second Street was the most visible symbol of this transformation; the company said the space was larger than it needed after operations were consolidated and staff began working remotely during the pandemic, but insisted the move did not change its commitment to serving readers and advertisers across Ashland County. The paper's response has been to emphasize the hybrid model: a daily print edition of record combined with continuous digital publishing, obituaries, eEdition, and mobile presence, while leaning on the USA TODAY Network for state, national, and sports content the local newsroom can no longer staff on its own. Its enduring advantages are its monopoly position as Ashland County's only daily newspaper, its deep archive of community history, and the trust built over 170 years of continuous publication. The outlook, like that of most Gannett community papers, depends on whether local digital subscriptions can sustain the local reporting that differentiates the Times-Gazette from the network content that surrounds it.