Encyclopedia Of Detroit
Detroit News, The
James E. Scripps was born in London, England on March 19, 1835 and raised on a farm near Rushville, Illinois. In 1857, he apprenticed at the Chicago Tribune. He moved to Detroit in 1859, and by 1862 managed and partly owned the Detroit Daily Advertiser newspaper. On August 23, 1873, Scripps began publication of The Evening News, which merged with the Detroit Tribune to become The Detroit News. With Scripps’ death in 1906, The Detroit News was taken over by George Gough Booth, Scripps’ son-in-law and was run by the family until the 1980s.
In 1917, The Detroit News moved its location from Shelby and Larned Streets to a new building, designed by Albert Kahn, on Lafayette and Second Streets. In 1986, the Gannett Corporation purchased The Detroit News for $717 million. 1989 saw the adoption of a one hundred year joint operating agreement, called the Detroit Media Partnership, between the Detroit Free Press and The News. It was owned equally by Knight Ridder and Gannett. The two papers shared business operations and split profits while their editorial staffs were kept separate. The two papers published a combined Saturday and Sunday paper until May 7, 2006, when the Detroit Free Press resumed publishing its own Sunday edition. On August 3, 2005, Gannett sold The News to Detroit Media Partnership and bought the Free Press from the Knight Ridder. The combined Sunday editions were replaced by a Sunday Free Press only on March 30, 2009.
The News occupied the Lafayette building until October 24, 2014 when Detroit Media Partnership operations were moved, along with the Detroit Free Press, to a joint location in the former Federal Reserve Building on West Fort Street. On June 27, 2014, Detroit Media Partnership sold the building to Dan Gilbert's Bedrock Real Estate Services.
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