October 5, 1892: Daily News Purchases Daily Tribune

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. In about 1890 Hill offered Robert C. Mitchell, who founded the newspaper in 1870 as the Duluth Tribune, $47,000 in cash (about $1.2 million today) for the newspaper. After Mitchell sold the paper it was managed by two of Hill’s young proteges. 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.  In 1929 the Duluth Herald, founded by Millie Bunnell 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.

The masthead of the Duluth Daily Tribune in 1892. (Image: Zenith City Press)