News Times

The twice-weekly newspaper has circulation of 8,250 and includes two weekly shoppers, This Week and Coast Classifieds, and a monthly specialty publication, Coast On Over and over 20 glossy magazine publications.

HISTORY OF THE NEWS-TIMES, NEWPORT

Lincoln County’s largest circulation newspaper is also its oldest. Founded by Col. Van Cleve who worked at the Albany Register, The Yaquina Post made its début in 1883. It was the paper of the then bustling community of Yaquina City, five miles upriver from Newport where the railroad ended. It hung on for 11 years and when West Benton County became Lincoln County, Yaquina City started to die and two papers sprang from the ashes. The Yaquina Bay News ended up in Newport. The Lincoln County Leader was established one month later in Toledo. Though the Newport News-Times eventually purchased the Leader, the direct link back to 1893 is with the Yaquina Bay News. Captain John Matthews, a British Cavalry officer who fought and was wounded in the Crimean War, established it. He started his newspaper career in London and was well past 60 when he came to Newport. In 1909, as Matthews approached 80, the paper reported he died of his wounds. John and Will Matthews, his sons, carried on the business until 1941. Will died in 1935 and John in 1941. At that point, the paper fell into the hands of a group consisting of Jerry Sittser, Ray Moe and Roy Fruit. It operated out of a building opposite the Abbey Hotel on the Bayfront. In 1923, Robert and Lucille Davie, originally from the Hillsboro Argus, founded a rival paper, the Newport Journal. When Robert died in 1947, Lucille hung on for several months, assisted by Ray Moe, and finally sold to a corporation founded by Monroe Sweetland. Moe sold the paper to Oregon newspaper publishers Walt Taylor and Lee Irwin in 1964. Taylor became the publisher and purchased the Lincoln County Times, Waldport, in 1965 and named the merged paper the Newport News-Times. In 1966 they acquired the Lincoln County Leader in Toledo. Taylor and Irwin sold the paper to the Glenn Jackson chain in 1977. The Ashland Daily Tidings, Cottage Grove Sentinel, Springfield News, Albany Democrat-Herald, Gresham Outlook and Sandy Post were added to the Newport News-Times and rounded out the Oregon newspaper group. Jackson died in 1980. Through a family settlement, the group was sold to Capital Cities Communications. Capital Cities Communications ended up purchasing American Broadcasting Company, which in turn was purchased by the Walt Disney Corporation. Lee Enterprises Incorporated, a newspaper company, purchased the Oregon group in 1997 to add to the Corvallis Gazette-Times. The name of the Newport News-Times was changed to News-Times in 1976 to reflect the scope of the paper’s coverage in Lincoln County.

Publishers since Walt Taylor sold the paper in 1977 have been: Tom Taylor, Tom Decker, Mike Thorpe, Mary Jo Parker, Clark Gallagher, Mark Bryan and Jeremy Burke.