The Republican is a newspaper based in Springfield, Massachusetts, covering news in the Greater Springfield area, as well as national news and pieces from Boston, Worcester and northern Connecticut. It is owned by Newhouse Newspapers, a division of Advance Publications. During the 19th century the paper, once the largest circulating daily in New England, played a key role in the United States Republican Party's founding. By 2023, The Republican's daily circulation had plummeted to 11,225, according to an audit published in the newspaper on September 27, 2023. Content from The Republican is published online to MassLive, a separate Advance Publications company. MassLive had a record 6 million unique monthly visitors in June 2019.
Beginning
Established by Samuel Bowles II in 1824 as a rural weekly, it was converted into a daily in 1844. From the beginning it had a focus on local news. As rapidly as possible its news-gathering was extended until within a few years its columns contained departments of items from every town and hamlet along the Connecticut Valley, as well as from Springfield. It achieved national renown in the 19th century under the tenure of Samuel Bowles III, a legacy that was passed to his son, Samuel Bowles IV, and grandson, Sherman Bowles.
Politics
In 1855, Bowles III called for the founding of a new party that would abolish slavery. He suggested the name "Republican". Once abolitionists founded a party by this name, The Republican became one of its most unrelenting supporters.
Bowles III believed that the newspaper should be a power in the moral, religious, and literary, as well as the political life of the community, and he tried to make his paper fulfill those functions. With the aid of J. G. Holland and others who joined the staff the paper attained excellent literary quality and a high moral tone. Its opinions soon reached all New England, and after the formation of the Republican party they extended far beyond the limits of any section.
During the controversies affecting slavery and resulting in the American Civil War, Bowles supported, in general, the Whig and Republican parties, but in the period of Reconstruction under President Ulysses S. Grant, his paper represented anti-administration or Liberal Republican opinions, while in the disputed election of 1876 it favored the claims of Samuel J. Tilden, and subsequently became independent in politics. Its editorial board endorsed the Democratic candidate for president in every modern election except the 2008 election, in which it endorsed John McCain, but subsequently endorsed Barack Obama in the 2012 election.
Growth and changes
During Bowles' lifetime, and subsequently, the Republican office was a sort of school for young journalists, especially in the matter of pungency and conciseness of style, one of his maxims being: "put it all in the first paragraph".
Bowles was an acquaintance of Emily Dickinson, and he published a handful of the very few poems by the poet printed in her lifetime, including "A narrow fellow in the grass" and "Safe in their alabaster chambers".
Bowles was succeeded as publisher and editor-in-chief of the Republican by his son Samuel Bowles (b. 1851).
Charles Dow, founder of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, started his career as a business reporter for the Springfield Daily Republican, as an apprentice to the newspaper's then-owner, Samuel Bowles III.
The Republican launched the careers of several prominent journalists and novelists. I. E. "Sy" Sanborn, longtime Chicago sportswriter and one of the original organizers of the Baseball Writers' Association of America in 1908, began his career at The Republican. Radio's "poet laureate" Norman Corwin was a reporter for The Republican in the 1930s. Novelist Tom Wolfe was a reporter for The Springfield Union in the late 1950s.
The title "Ms." was first suggested by an anonymous 1901 letter to The Republican. The letter read, in part, "To call a maiden Mrs. is only a shade worse than to insult a matron with the inferior title Miss. Yet it is not always easy to know the facts... The abbreviation 'Ms.' is simple, it is easy to write, and the person concerned can translate it properly according to the circumstances."
During the 1920s, Sherman Bowles, son of Samuel Bowles IV, constructed a modern printing plant at 32 Cypress Street in Springfield and launched the hostile takeover of three competitors. His newspaper monopoly controlled a combined circulation of 280,000. He died on March 3, 1952 of a heart attack at the age of 61.