About Phoenix Gazette

Phoenix Gazette

The Phoenix Gazette was an afternoon daily newspaper published in Phoenix, Arizona, from 1881 until January 1997. Founded the same year Phoenix itself was formally incorporated, it grew alongside the desert settlement into the newspaper of record for the city's afternoons, serving generations of readers in what became one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the United States. For most of the twentieth century it was the sister newspaper of the morning Arizona Republic, sharing ownership with its former rival while maintaining its own afternoon identity, until declining circulation for evening papers finally brought its 116-year run to an end.

The Gazette's history traced the arc of the American afternoon newspaper itself. It began in the territorial era, passed through the hands of territorial politicians and local publishers, was bought by the owners of its rival, and then spent half a century under Eugene C. Pulliam's Central Newspapers. When it printed its last issue on January 18, 1997, its publisher acknowledged that the marketplace was telling the company there was only limited appeal left for an afternoon newspaper in a market that preferred a morning paper.

Founding in 1881

The Phoenix Gazette was founded in 1881 and was known in its early years as the Phoenix Evening Gazette. Its founding coincided with a formative moment for the city: Phoenix was officially incorporated on February 25, 1881, when the Phoenix Charter Bill was signed, instituting a mayor-council form of government, and the city's first mayor was elected that May. The Gazette thus began life in a newly incorporated territorial town of roughly 1,800 people, where a newspaper was an essential institution for recording public business, advertising commerce and connecting a remote desert community to the wider territory and nation.

From the start, the Gazette was an evening paper, a format well suited to a working town: readers received the day's news after the working day, including reports carried by wire and the results of markets and public affairs that had unfolded during daylight hours. That afternoon identity remained the paper's defining characteristic for its entire existence, through all of its changes of name, ownership and fortune.

Territorial-Era Ownership

In 1889, the Gazette was purchased by Samuel F. Webb, who at the time was a member of the 15th Arizona Territorial Legislature, serving as the councilor from Maricopa County in the legislature's upper house. Webb's purchase reflected the close relationship between newspapers and politics in territorial Arizona, where editors and proprietors routinely held public office and papers served as platforms for political careers and causes.

The Gazette continued publication through Arizona's long territorial period and into statehood in 1912, by which time Phoenix was established as the state capital and a growing agricultural and commercial center in the Salt River Valley. Through these decades the paper competed directly with the morning paper that became the Arizona Republic, a rivalry that structured Phoenix journalism until the two papers came under common ownership.

Purchase by the Republic's Owners in 1930

In 1930, the Gazette was purchased by Charles Stauffer and W. Wesley Knorpp, the owners of its one-time rival, the Arizona Republic. Stauffer and Knorpp changed the Republican's name to the Arizona Republic that same year and also bought the Phoenix Weekly Gazette, which later became the Arizona Business Gazette. The acquisitions consolidated Phoenix's principal newspapers under one ownership, with the Republic serving morning readers and the Gazette serving the afternoon.

Under this arrangement, the Gazette continued to operate as the main evening paper for the Phoenix area. Common ownership ended the era of head-to-head competition between the two dailies but preserved two distinct publications, published by what became Phoenix Newspapers Inc., each with its own place in readers' daily routines.

The Pulliam Era

Both papers were acquired in 1946 by Eugene C. Pulliam, whose holding company, Central Newspapers, Inc., owned the Gazette from 1946 until its closure in 1997. Pulliam ran the Republic and the Gazette until his death in 1975 at the age of 86, imprinting his newspapers with his conservative politics and his drive for civic leadership. He was considered one of the influential business leaders who created the modern Phoenix area as it came to be known, and his papers both reflected and promoted the city's extraordinary postwar growth.

After Pulliam's death, Central Newspapers, led by his widow and son, assumed operation of the Republic and Gazette family of papers. Under Pulliam-era and post-Pulliam management alike, the Gazette continued for several decades as Phoenix's principal afternoon newspaper, even as the metropolitan area expanded dramatically across the Valley of the Sun.

The Afternoon Paper in a Growing Metropolis

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Gazette was published on weekday and Saturday afternoons. At its height in the mid-1980s, its circulation was about 110,000 copies, a substantial figure that made it a major voice in the Phoenix market alongside the much larger morning Republic. Its pages carried the day's developing news for readers who wanted a paper at the end of the day, in an era when Phoenix was booming into a major American city.

The Gazette's position, however, depended on a reading habit that was disappearing across the United States. Afternoon newspapers everywhere struggled as evening television news, changing work and commuting patterns, and finally the rise of morning-oriented publishing economics drew readers away. The Gazette was not immune: its readers increasingly shifted to the Republic, and the afternoon paper's numbers fell steadily from their mid-1980s peak.

Merger of the Newsrooms

In August 1995, the staffs of the Republic and the Gazette were merged. From that point, the Gazette mostly became an afternoon edition of the Republic with a few updates, rather than a fully distinct newspaper produced by its own newsroom. The combined newsroom marked the effective end of the Gazette as an independent editorial operation, although the nameplate continued to appear and copies continued to be delivered to subscribers each afternoon.

The merger foreshadowed the paper's fate. A publication that largely repeated the morning paper's content, with limited fresh reporting of its own, gave readers diminishing reason to subscribe to both, and the Gazette's circulation continued to decline after the newsrooms combined.

Closure in January 1997

The Phoenix Gazette printed its last issue on January 18, 1997. It was 116 years old. At the end, its circulation was down to about 39,000, compared with the Republic's circulation of about 380,000 daily and 580,000 on Sundays. John F. Oppedahl, publisher and chief executive of Phoenix Newspapers Inc., said the company felt nostalgia for the Gazette but that the marketplace was showing only limited appeal for an afternoon newspaper. Republic managing editor Pam Johnson noted that most of the Gazette's circulation drop resulted from its readers shifting to the Republic.

The closure eliminated 55 editorial jobs across the two papers, which by then maintained a combined newsroom, along with a reduction of about 30 jobs in other departments through attrition and changes in production schedules. For several months, Gazette subscribers received afternoon delivery of copies of the Republic, and were eventually offered morning delivery instead. The company said folding the Gazette would be followed by a redesign of its news-gathering operation and a further expansion into the suburbs of the Valley of the Sun, where competitors included the Mesa Tribune and the Tempe Daily News-Tribune. Its sister weekly, the Arizona Business Gazette, continued publication after the daily Gazette closed.

What Remained Afterward

The organization that had published the Gazette did not long remain independent. In 2000, Gannett purchased Central Newspapers, bringing the Arizona Republic into common ownership with USA Today. The Gazette itself, however, was already gone, and its name survived mainly in archives, library collections and historical records — including its listings in the Library of Congress newspaper directory under both the Phoenix Gazette and Phoenix Evening Gazette titles.

A tangible relic reached a museum setting: Arizona State University's Cronkite School gallery displayed a Phoenix Gazette newspaper box holding a copy of the paper's last issue from 1997, among artifacts of local journalism significance. The exhibit treated the final Gazette as a landmark object in Arizona media history, marking the end of afternoon daily publication in Phoenix.

Legacy

The Phoenix Gazette was remembered as one of the foundational institutions of Phoenix journalism. For 116 years it provided the capital city with an afternoon daily, covering the territory's politics, statehood, the growth of the Salt River Valley, two world wars, and the postwar explosion that made Phoenix a major metropolis. Its long pairing with the Arizona Republic — first as rivals, then as sister papers under Stauffer and Knorpp and later under Pulliam's Central Newspapers — defined how Phoenix read its news for most of the twentieth century.

Its end was part of a national story: the disappearance of the afternoon newspaper from American cities. When the Gazette closed in January 1997, Phoenix joined the growing list of American cities served by a single daily newspaper, and a publication that had begun in the year of the city's incorporation passed into history.