The Duluth News Tribune was housed in the Weiland Block from 19001 -– 1930. (Image: Duluth Public Library.)
On this day in Duluth in 1892, St. Paul “Empire Builder” James J. Hill sold his Duluth morning newspaper, the Duluth Daily Tribune to Guilford Hartley and Luther Mendenhall, who already owned the Duluth Daily News. The Tribune had come to Duluth in 1870, when Robert C. Mitchell closed the Superior Tribune and moved his printing equipment across the bay to the Zenith City. In about 1890 Hill offered Mitchell $47,00 in cash—about $1.2 million today—for the newspaper. Mitchell sold the paper, which was managed by two of Hill’s young protege’s. According to Mitchell, Hill’s men “made a bad mess of it, [and] ran the paper heavily in debt. Disgusted, Hill sold the paper to one of its biggest competitors and washed his hands of the newspaper business in Duluth. The Daily News, founded by Fred H. Lounsberry, absorbed the Daily Tribune and changed the publication’s name to the Duluth News Tribune. Later Mendenhall sold his interest in the paper to Hartley. In 1929 the Duluth Herald, founded by Millie Brunnel in 1883, purchased the News Tribune, and continued to publish it under the same name. In 1982 publication of the evening edition ceased and the paper’s name became the Duluth News-Tribune & Herald; the name was shortened to the Duluth News-Tribune about six years later. Today it is the Duluth News Tribune, no hyphen. Read a history of Duluth newspapers through 1910 here.
