Top of the Morning, July 29, 2024

Eagle-eyed readers might have noticed something at the top right of the front page: Today is The News-Gazette’s “birthday.”

The edition you are now reading is Year 173, No. 1. A year ago, a similar eagle-eyed reader, Richard DeLong, noticed the change and wrote me to ask about the significance, which sent me down a rabbit hole.

As it turns out, the components of The N-G’s birth date derive their starting points from separate events.

The year/volume number, 173, is based on the first newspaper ever published in Champaign County — the Urbana Union, a weekly — which debuted on Sept. 25, 1852.

But there’s no “Union” in this paper’s name, so how does it factor in? Well, six years after the Union began publishing, in 1858, residents got a second weekly, the Central Illinois Gazette — that should look more familiar. The two merged for a few years during the Civil War, then separated, with the Union closing in 1882.

The next year, the Gazette began publishing as the Champaign Daily Gazette — the county’s first daily. It stayed that way until 1919, when David W. Stevick bought it and merged it with the Champaign Daily News, which he had bought four years earlier, to form The News-Gazette you read today.

But why July 29? It wasn’t the date of the first Union or the first Gazette. But the Daily News that Stevick bought in 1915 had made its debut 20 years earlier, on Monday, July 29, 1895. That’s it up there at the top.

So Sept. 25, 1852, was Vol. 1, No. 1 for the first paper in the county, which shared heritage with the “Gazette” half, while July 29, 1895, was Vol. 1, No. 1 for the first paper Stevick owned, the “News” half. Merge the year of the former with the date of the latter, and you have The N-G’s birthday.

Here’s to another 173 years.

(And a huge tip of the hat to columnist Tom Kacich and his book “Hot Type,” which he was commissioned to write in 2002 for The N-G’s 150th anniversary, and which proved to be a valuable resource for this research. It’s available online.)

(And a huge tip of the hat to columnist Tom Kacich and his book “Hot Type,” which he was commissioned to write in 2002 for The N-G’s 150th anniversary, and which proved to be a valuable resource for this research. It’s available online.)