The Morning Call

19th century

The Morning Call was founded in 1883. Its original name was The Critic. Its original editor, owner and chief reporter was Samuel S. Woolever. The newspaper's first reporter was a Muhlenberg College senior, David A. Miller. The newspaper was subsequently acquired and owned by Charles Weiser, its editor, and Kirt W. DeBelle, its business manager.

In 1894, the newspaper launched a reader contest, offering $5 in gold to a school boy or girl in Lehigh County who could guess the publication's new name. The identity of the lucky winner is lost to history. But on January 1, 1895, Allentown City Treasurer A.L. Reichenbach, who supervised the contest, announced that the newspaper was being renamed The Morning Call. That same year, David A. Miller and his brother Samuel Miller began purchasing private shares in The Morning Call, ultimately acquiring the newspaper completely in 1904.

20th century

By 1920, the newspaper's circulation was 20,000. That year, Harry Clay Trexler acquired the newspaper from the Miller brothers. A year following Trexler's death in 1933, David A. Miller returned to the newspaper. In 1935, The Morning Call acquired a competing Allentown newspaper, The Chronicle and News, renaming it The Evening Chronicle. In 1938, The Sunday Call-Chronicle was first published.

In 1951, David A. Miller assumed the official title of president of the Call-Chronicle newspapers, maintaining that role until his death in 1958 at age 88. In September 1951, Miller's two sons, Donald and Samuel, were appointed the newspaper's publishers. After Samuel Miller's death in 1967, Donald P. Miller continued to run the newspaper along with huis son Edward D. Miller, who was appointed executive editor and publisher in the late 1970s.

In 1980, The Evening Chronicle ceased publication. The following year, in 1981, Edward D. Miller left the newspaper, and Donald P. Miller returned as its chairman. Bernard C. Stinner was appointed the newspaper's publisher and chief executive officer. In 1984, the newspaper was sold to the Times Mirror Company. Gary K. Shorts was appointed the newspaper's publisher and chief executive officer in 1987. He was succeeded by Guy Gilmore in 2000. Susan Hunt was named publisher in June 2001.

21st century

In 2000, Times Mirror Company's media assets, including The Morning Call, were acquired by Tribune Media.^[2]

In May 2021, The Morning Call was again acquired, this time by Alden Global Capital, a New York City–based hedge fund, which already had acquired nearly a third of Tribune Media. The acquisition was opposed and then criticized by the guild representing journalists at the newspaper.^[3]

Discover more about History related topics

Muhlenberg College

Muhlenberg College

Muhlenberg College is a private liberal arts college in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1848, Muhlenberg College is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and is named for Henry Muhlenberg, the German patriarch of Lutheranism in the United States.

Lehigh County, Pennsylvania

Lehigh County, Pennsylvania

Lehigh County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the county's population was 374,557. Its county seat is Allentown, the state's third largest city after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Harry Clay Trexler

Harry Clay Trexler

Henry Clay Trexler was an American industrialist, businessman, and major philanthropist who contributed to the economic development of Allentown, Pennsylvania and the surrounding Lehigh Valley in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He bequeathed the majority of his estate to create the Harry C. Trexler Trust, which has since dispensed more than $150 million in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania.

Times Mirror Company

Times Mirror Company

The Times Mirror Company was an American newspaper and print media publisher from 1884 until 2000.

Tribune Media

Tribune Media

Tribune Media Company, also known as Tribune Company, was an American multimedia conglomerate headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.

Alden Global Capital

Alden Global Capital

Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. It was founded in 2007 by Randall D. Smith. Its managing director is Heath Freeman. By mid-2020, Alden had stakes in roughly two hundred American newspapers. The company added more newspapers to its portfolio in May 2021 when it purchased Tribune Publishing and became the second-largest newspaper publisher in the United States.

New York City

New York City

New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over 300.46 square miles (778.2 km2), New York City is the most densely populated major city in the United States and more than twice as populous as Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest city. New York City is located at the southern tip of New York State. It constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the U.S. by both population and urban area. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous megacities, and over 58 million people live within 250 mi (400 km) of the city. New York City is a global cultural, financial, entertainment, and media center with a significant influence on commerce, health care and life sciences, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, dining, art, fashion, and sports. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy, and is sometimes described as the capital of the world.

Rape and sexual assault allegations against columnist

In 2020, Paul Carpenter, a Morning Call bureau chief and Morning Call columnist for 25 years from 1984 until 2019 was sued by his daughter, who charged Carpenter with "repeatedly raping and sexually assaulting" her for a decade from age nine until age nineteen.^[4][5]

Rent arrears and headquarters closure

In 2020, the landlord for The Morning Call's offices at 101 N. Sixth Street in Center City Allentown sued The Morning Call, alleging it had failed to pay rent for the headquarters for four consecutive months in April, May, June, and again in July 2020.^[6]

On August 12, 2020, the newspaper's interim general manager Timothy Thomas sent an email to employees, announcing that The Morning Call was permanently closing its headquarters, which the newspaper had maintained for a century since 1920, as it searched "for ways to save money as advertising revenue dwindled." The newspaper's roughly 100 employees were asked in the email to "retrieve personal items from the office by September 15," the newspaper reported.^[7]