Beaufort Gazette

(2003 circulation: 11,440 daily and 10,937 Sunday). A morning newspaper, daily and Sunday, published in the city of Beaufort. The Beaufort Gazette was founded in 1897 by the attorney William Elliott, Jr., and Sheriff W. G. Prentiss. Prentiss died in 1898, and the next year Elliott moved to Columbia. W. P. Waterhouse, the new owner of the Gazette, located the newspaper at his cotton warehouse. Niels Christensen, Jr., a political ally of Waterhouse and future state senator, bought the Gazette in 1903 primarily to espouse his progressive political views. The Palmetto Post was merged into the Gazette in 1907.

In 1922 Christensen sold the Gazette for $10,000 to a group of investors sponsored by the Beaufort Chamber of Commerce. A fire gutted the newspaper offices in 1924. Three years later a group of forty-six investors bought the Gazette and named A. S. Morrall president and publisher. In order to cut costs during the Depression, the editor E. O. Wilson dismissed his reporters and advertised that citizens would have to bring the news directly to his office. The newspaper was cut from eight pages to four but managed to survive.

The Evening Post Publishing Company of Charleston, publishers of the two Charleston dailies, bought the Gazette in 1963 and named T. Miles Burbage editor and publisher. The newspaper occupied a new plant in March 1973 and began to publish five days a week on April 30. The Gazette was sold in 1975 to the News and Observer Publishing Company of Raleigh, North Carolina, which also owned the Island Packet of Hilton Head Island. The Gazette was converted from an afternoon paper to a morning newspaper in 1990. That same year the newspaper was sold to McClatchy Newspapers of Sacramento, California. A Sunday issue was added in 1991, and a Saturday edition in 1995.

McNeely, Patricia G. The Palmetto Press: The History of South Carolina’s Newspapers and the Press Association. Columbia: South Carolina Press Association, 1998.