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Wind
Energy Capital of Oklahoma!
The
Weatherford Daily News is the successor to the Weatherford DEMOCRAT and was
established concurrently with the town of Weatherford in 1898, haphazardly
at first. In 1899, the DEMOCRAT began numbering its volumes. The publication
was purchased in 1903 by county office holders, including sheriff John
Campbell, who put up $100 each. The following year, Campbell, who had
acquired the interests of the others, sold the paper to Harry J. Bray who
published the DEMOCRAT until 1914 when an Englishman, Nathan Shumate DeMotte
bought it and published it, along with Harry Demotte and his son Loren,
until the death of the elder DeMotte in 1922.
Veteran
publisher and later politician James C. Nance purchased the paper from the
DeMottes in 1922 and sold it to Southwestern Oklahoma State University
graduate and football great James J. Craddock in 1929 when the name was
changed to The Weatherford News.
Craddock
remained as publisher the next 41 years, establishing the newspaper as the
voice and the backbone of the community. Craddock knew the paper needed to
be expanded to a daily newspaper.
 Realizing
he would not do it, Craddock contacted Kenneth O. Reid, former publisher of
the Pauls Valley DEMOCRAT, the first offset daily in Oklahoma, and asked if
he would buy the newspaper and change it to a daily and offset. Reid and his
family moved to Weatherford July 1, 1972, bought the newspaper and made the
changes, plus initiated carrier home delivery when it moved into its newly
remodeled building April 1, 1973.
The
Weatherford Daily NEWS is published today by Phillip Reid, son of Kenneth O.
and Phyllis Reid and his wife, Jeanne Ann Reid.
Our
other publications:
The
Weatherford Daily News
Family
Publications also includes the
Vinita Daily Journal,
The Perry Daily Journal,
the Nowata Star, Tri-County Journal and the
Afton/Fairland American.
Please contact us about joint news releases and advertising
possibilities for all six publications. |
