Charleston Gazette-Mail
| Type | Weekend daily paper |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1961 |
| OCLC number | 2259168 |
The Charleston Gazette-Mail is a Saturday and Sunday newspaper in Charleston, West Virginia, USA. It is published by a joint venture between the Charleston Gazette and the Charleston Daily Mail which publish editorially rival, but non-competitive, in business terms, papers on weekdays.
Sunday
In 1961, the morning Gazette, owned by the Daily Gazette Company, and the afternoon Daily Mail (which also published a Sunday morning edition), owned by former Alaska Governor Walter Clark, entered into a Joint Operating Agreement. The two papers remained editorially separate, but combined all business functions and carried the same advertising, with each owning 50% of the joint venture company, Charleston Newspapers Inc., from which profits were split. Both papers began publishing Monday-Saturday, with subscribers of both receiving the combined Gazette-Mail on Sunday.
The paper was produced by a combined staff between 1961 and 1991, when the agreement was renegotiated so that the Gazette staff would produce the paper. The local editorial viewpoint of the paper after that point mirrored that of the Gazette. The paper, however, has always featured a different font package from either paper, and has featured national columnists (which reflected both papers' viewpoints) and comics from both papers.
Saturday
In 2004 the Daily Gazette Company purchased the Daily Mail from Media News Group and shut down its Saturday edition. In 2007, the company became the subject of U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit under antitrust laws. DOJ alleged that the company marketed and operated the Daily Mail in a noncompetitive manner, with the ultimate goal of shutting down the paper.
In January 2009, the Daily Mail switched to morning publication and the Daily Gazette Company began a Saturday Gazette-Mail.
On Jan. 20, 2010, the Daily Gazette Company and the Justice Department settled relative to violations in the purchase of the Daily Mail and the Daily Gazette Company's management of it. Under the terms of the settlement, the previous owner, the Media News Group, holds a perpetual option to re-purchase 20 percent of the paper, has two of five seats on the management board, determines the size of the budget for its news staff and chooses its editorial content. The Daily Gazette is required to seek government permission to cease publication of the Daily Mail, and the paper's intellectual property will pass to the Media News Group should it ever be shut down, including the domain name dailymail.com, which the newspaper beat out the larger London paper to acquire and register.
This publication carries two editorial pages, one reflecting the more conservative Daily Mail's views and one reflecting the more liberal view of the Gazette, as well as two comics pages. It is otherwise, however, indistinguishable from the weekday Gazette, using its font package, being produced (apart from the Daily Mail editorial page) by its staff and reflecting its views.
The Gazette website is updated with the Saturday and Sunday material from the Gazette-Mail, but the Daily Mail website is not.
West Virginian of the Year
The paper's last Sunday edition of the year selects a West Virginian of the Year on a similar basis to Time magazine's Person of the Year.
Motto
Reflecting the Gazette's motto of "The State Newspaper" the paper's motto is "The Saturday/Sunday Newspaper of West Virginia".