The Daily American

About The Daily American

The Daily American is a local daily newspaper providing coverage of county-wide news and sports in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Founded on July 1, 1929, as the Somerset Daily Herald, it was the first daily newspaper in the borough of Somerset and has served the county continuously for nearly a century. It is owned by the USA Today Co. and publishes from Somerset, the county seat, with its journalism available in print and at dailyamerican.com.

Founding as the Somerset Daily Herald

The Somerset Daily Herald made its first appearance on July 1, 1929, under the leadership of Henry Baker Reiley, as the first daily newspaper in Somerset. The launch came just months before the stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression, making the paper's survival through the 1930s a testament to its founder's determination and to the loyalty of its readership. In time the paper was renamed the Daily American, the name under which it has been known for most of its history. Its early decades established it as the paper of record for a rural Pennsylvania county defined by farming, coal mining and small-town civic life.

The Reiley family years

For nearly seven decades the paper was run as a family business, Somerset Newspapers Inc., by the Reiley family. Henry Baker Reiley built the paper from its 1929 founding, and the family maintained local, independent ownership through the postwar boom, the decline of coal, and the consolidation waves that swept much of American newspapering in the late 20th century. Family ownership gave the paper a stability and a community rootedness that readers valued: the Daily American was not a distant chain property but a Somerset institution run by Somerset people, covering Somerset County first and always.

Sale to Schurz Communications

The family era ended in 1997, when the company was sold by Reiley's grandson David H. Reiley to Schurz Communications Inc. of South Bend, Indiana. Schurz, a family-owned media company with newspaper, television and radio holdings, owned the paper for more than two decades. Under Schurz the Daily American modernized its operations and its plant: an 18,000-square-foot, multimillion-dollar office and warehouse facility was constructed in early 2000, giving the paper a purpose-built home for its newsroom, presses and distribution operations on West Main Street in Somerset.

A first Sunday edition

For the first 86 years of its history the Daily American published no Sunday edition. That changed when publisher Andy Bruns announced that the paper would begin publishing a Sunday edition for the first time, launching on December 31. The newspaper, then owned by Schurz Communications, produced the new edition in a partnership with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the largest of several papers owned by Richard Mellon Scaife. The Sunday edition combined local news produced by the Daily American staff with state and national news produced by the Tribune-Review — a wrap-around model that made a seven-day paper financially feasible in a market of Somerset's size. Bruns was candid about the economics: as he told Editor & Publisher, it rarely makes financial sense for newspaper markets of Somerset's size to publish seven days a week, but he believed it could work if the Daily American partnered with a larger newspaper. The Tribune-Review and its Greensburg sister paper brought a combined Sunday circulation of 158,000 to the partnership, while the Daily American contributed its paid circulation of about 14,000 and its unmatched local report. The Sunday launch gave Somerset County readers a seven-day newspaper for the first time in the paper's history: local news produced by the Daily American's own staff, wrapped around the state and national report produced by the Tribune-Review. For a county daily in a market of Somerset's size, the partnership showed how a small paper could offer Sunday readers a full package without bearing the full cost of a seven-day newsroom alone.

Sale to GateHouse Media

In January 2019 the paper was sold by Schurz Communications to GateHouse Media, part of the wave of Schurz newspaper divestitures that reshaped the company's portfolio. GateHouse's parent company, New Media Investment Group, merged with Gannett later that year, and the combined company eventually rebranded as the USA Today Co. The Daily American thus became part of the USA Today Network, gaining corporate siblings across Pennsylvania and the nation while continuing to publish as Somerset County's daily paper.

Leaving Main Street

In July 2023 the paper closed a long chapter when, after decades at 334 W. Main Street in Somerset, the staff moved out as a new owner took over the property. The building was purchased by local businessman Leo Karruli, with the Somerset Salvation Army Service Center remaining as a tenant to continue its heating assistance, food pantry, Angel Tree, back-to-school, Christmas coat and rental assistance programs. The Daily American continued covering Somerset County with employees working from home, part of a nationwide shift as newsrooms reduced their physical footprints. Writing at the time, the paper's leadership acknowledged how hard it was to say goodbye to the downtown building but called the move necessary for the survival of the institution, expressing hope for a smaller, more efficient gathering place in the future rather than a large hub.

Coverage area

The Daily American covers Somerset County in southwestern Pennsylvania, a county of boroughs, townships and villages stretching from the Laurel Highlands to the Maryland border. Somerset borough, the county seat, anchors coverage that extends to Meyersdale, Berlin, Rockwood, Windber and the county's rural townships. The county's identity — shaped by agriculture, coal heritage, the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, ski resorts and outdoor recreation — gives the paper a distinctive mix of hard news, heritage and community life to cover.

Editorial focus

As a county daily, the paper concentrates on the news its readers cannot get anywhere else: county and municipal government, the courts, public schools, local business and agriculture, and above all local sports. High school athletics are a centerpiece of the paper's coverage, reflecting a region where Friday night football and winter basketball are community rituals. The paper has also long nurtured local voices: longtime contributor David Hay, for example, wrote weekly columns for decades — first "It Happened in Woodlawn," begun on a sleepless night in May 1973, then the broader "My Somerset County" — along with hundreds of stories on grange news, local history and farm life, working with five different owners of the newspaper over his career. Hay also wrote for the paper's specialty publications, including the former Farm, Field and Garden and Somerset Magazine, the Daily American's glossy magazine showcasing the county's people, scenery and way of life.

Digital presence

The paper's digital home is dailyamerican.com, which carries breaking news, sports, entertainment and obituaries for the Somerset area. The site extends the reach of the print edition to former residents, second-home owners and anyone following Somerset County from afar, and it has become the paper's front page for a generation of readers who get their news on phones rather than doorsteps.

Archives

The paper's near-century of publication is preserved in one of the deeper newspaper archives in Pennsylvania: the Daily American's back issues from 1929 to 2026, comprising nearly 800,000 searchable pages, are available through Newspapers.com, under the predecessor names Somerset Daily American and Somerset Daily Herald as well as the modern title. For genealogists tracing Somerset County families — through birth, marriage and obituary announcements — and for historians of the region's coal, farming and civic life, the archive is an irreplaceable record. The paper's official website is dailyamerican.com.