Richmond Register

About Richmond Register

The Richmond Register is a tri-weekly newspaper based in Richmond, Kentucky, covering Madison County. Publishing Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, it is owned by Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (CNHI) and headquartered at 1212 West Main Street in Richmond. The modern paper dates its founding to 1917, but its lineage in Richmond's press history stretches back much further — to the city's first paper, published in 1809, and through a colorful succession of 19th-century editors, publishers and even a governor of Kentucky.

Roots in 1809

The Richmond Register's history goes back to the incorporation era of the city of Richmond itself: the city's first paper was published on November 2, 1809. The newspaper changed hands many times over the decades that followed, as Richmond grew from a frontier county seat into the commercial center of Madison County. That deep lineage — more than two centuries of continuous newspaper presence in one Kentucky county-seat town — makes the Register one of the oldest newspaper institutions in the state, even as its modern corporate form dates to the 20th century.

The Civil War void and B.H. Brown's Kentucky Register

The ravages of the Civil War left Richmond without a newspaper as early as 1862, and several short-lived startups failed during the war years. In 1866, B.H. Brown launched the successful Kentucky Register, starting with only a few drawers of type and a used hand-crank press. Brown built the paper steadily, and by 1880 it was touting "the finest editorial and library rooms in the state." The Kentucky Register gave postwar Richmond a durable Democratic voice and re-established the town's newspaper tradition after the wartime silence.

Owners and editors of the 19th century

Brown sold a half interest in the Democratic paper to Judge William C. Miller in 1868. Three years later, Brown sold his remaining interest to Francis Marion Green, a Richmond lawyer who never married or held political office of any kind. Within a year Miller retired, leaving Green as the sole proprietor, a position he held until his death in 1895. Green had at least one notable editor during his tenure: the infamous Madison County newspaperman French Tipton, who took the editorial reins in 1875 and left the paper in 1887 — and who was later shot and killed by a rival journalist, a grim reminder of how heated Kentucky's newspaper wars could be in that era.

Capt. Rock, Pickels and Lilly

Green was succeeded by civil engineer Capt. Samuel F. Rock, who began publishing both the weekly Register and a semiweekly edition known as the Semi-weekly Register. Rock is said to have also owned the Valley View Argent, the Ford Index and the Irvine Leader, making him one of the biggest newspaper publishers in Kentucky at the time. The Semi-Weekly Register ceased publication soon after 1900. In 1907, Rock sold the weekly to Thomas H. Pickels, who maintained the Kentucky Register until 1917, when it was sold to Grant E. Lilly — the transaction that marks the founding date of the modern Richmond Register.

Keen Johnson: from editor's desk to governor's mansion

The Register's most distinguished alumnus is Keen Johnson, who edited the Richmond Daily Register from 1925 to 1939. Johnson went on to serve as lieutenant governor of Kentucky from 1935 to 1939 and then as governor of Kentucky from 1939 to 1943, leading the state through the buildup to World War II. After his governorship he served as undersecretary of labor from 1946 to 1947. A longtime Richmond-area resident, Johnson is interred in the Richmond Cemetery. His path from a county-seat newsroom to the state's highest office remains a point of pride in the paper's history.

CNHI ownership

Newspaper Holdings — Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., the CNHI chain — bought the Register in 1999, bringing the Madison County paper into one of the country's larger groups of community newspapers. CNHI, founded in 1997 and based in Montgomery, Alabama, as a subsidiary of the Retirement Systems of Alabama, owns daily and non-daily newspapers in more than 20 states. Under CNHI the Register has continued as Richmond's hometown paper, with its newsroom covering the county seat while drawing on the resources of a national community-newspaper group.

From five days to three

For most of its modern history the Register published as a five-day daily, Tuesday through Saturday. In May 2020, the paper made a permanent change: it moved to a Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday publishing schedule, as announced by publisher Gary Tyler and reported by the Kentucky Press Association. The change reflected the economic realities facing small dailies across America — declining print advertising, rising delivery costs and readers' migration online — and the tri-weekly rhythm has defined the paper ever since. Industry listings have credited the paper with daily circulation around 4,400 in the tri-weekly era, down from about 6,300 in its five-day days.

Best in Kentucky and the bilingual column

The Register has earned statewide recognition for its journalism: in January 2006 it was named the best newspaper in the state by the Kentucky Press Association. The paper has also been a pioneer in serving its changing community. Under editor Jim Todd, the Register launched a bilingual column — believed to be the first in Kentucky — written by Alberto Sanz, a Guadalajara, Mexico, native with degrees in journalism, anthropology and business administration who publishes a weekly Spanish-language newspaper for central Kentucky. Running in English and Spanish side by side, the column was aimed at Madison County's growing Hispanic population, evident in the county's Hispanic-owned businesses and workforce. The Register also printed Sanz's Spanish-language weekly, extending its press's service to the community's newest readers.

Covering Madison County

The Register covers Madison County in central Kentucky, anchored by Richmond, the county seat, and including Berea, the college town to the south. Richmond is home to Eastern Kentucky University, whose students, faculty and campus life form a major part of the paper's coverage alongside city and county government, the courts, public schools, local business and high school sports. Madison County's identity — a mix of college town, county-seat government center, manufacturing and Bluegrass farmland — gives the paper a varied civic beat, from EKU Colonels athletics to fiscal court meetings to the agricultural rhythms of the surrounding county.

Digital presence

The paper's digital home is richmondregister.com, where its local reporting appears alongside e-edition access, obituaries, classifieds and community announcements. The paper has invested in its digital footprint in recent years: when Ricki Pryor was named editor in December 2020, the Kentucky Press Association noted that she had spearheaded efforts to strengthen the newspaper's digital presence and visual storytelling through the use of video. Pryor, an award-winning journalist with more than a decade of experience across television, radio, public relations and newspapers in Kentucky, Georgia and Indiana — including stints at The Anderson News in Lawrenceburg and as a sports writer for Kentucky Sports Radio — called Madison County's rich history an honor to chronicle through the area's most reliable and trusted news source.

The Madison County Advertiser

Alongside the Register, the company publishes the Madison County Advertiser, a classified-ad shopper with a weekly circulation of 21,500 copies. The Advertiser is affiliated with and printed by the Richmond Register, extending the paper's advertising reach to every household in the county while the Register itself focuses on paid-circulation journalism. Together the two publications give Madison County households both a free shopper and a tri-weekly newspaper — a combination that has kept local print advertising viable in Richmond even as the industry has contracted nationally. The Register's official website is richmondregister.com.