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New Hampshire Union Leader

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"Union Leader" redirects here. For other uses, see Union Leader (disambiguation).
New Hampshire Union Leader
New Hampshire Sunday News
November 27, 2011 front page
of the New Hampshire Sunday News, which is now the Saturday edition of the New Hampshire Union Leader
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatBroadsheet
Owner(s)Union Leader Corp.
PublisherBrendan J. McQuaid
Founded1863
Headquarters200 Bedford Street
Manchester, NH 03108-9555
United States
CirculationAbout 20,000 on Sundays (as of 2024)[1]
ISSN0745-5798
WebsiteUnionLeader.com

The New Hampshire Union Leader is a daily newspaper from Manchester, the largest city in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. On Saturdays, it publishes as the New Hampshire Sunday News.

Founded in 1863, the paper was best known for the conservative political opinions of its late publisher, William Loeb, and his wife, Elizabeth Scripps "Nackey" Loeb. The paper helped to derail the candidacy in 1972 of U.S. Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination. Loeb criticized Muskie's wife, Jane, in editorials. When he defended her in a press conference, there was a measured negative effect on voter perceptions of Muskie within New Hampshire.[2]

Over the decades, the Loebs gained considerable influence and helped shape New Hampshire's political landscape. In 2000, after Nackey's death on January 8, Joseph McQuaid, the son and nephew of the founders of the New Hampshire Sunday News, Bernard J. and Elias McQuaid, took over as publisher. He was succeeded by his son, Brendan, in 2020.

History

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Like many newspapers, the Union Leader has a complex history involving mergers and buyouts.

The weekly Union became the Manchester Daily Union on March 31, 1863. The afternoon Union became a morning Daily Union (dropping the "Manchester"). Although the Union began as a Democratic paper, by the early 1910s it had been purchased by Londonderry politician Rosecrans Pillsbury, a Republican.

In October 1912, the competing Manchester Leader was founded by Frank Knox, later Secretary of the Navy during World War II, and financed by then-Governor Robert P. Bass, a member of the Progressive (or Bull Moose) Party who was attempting to promote the Progressive cause in New Hampshire. The newspaper was so successful that Knox bought out the Union, and the two newspapers merged under the banner of the Union-Leader Corporation July 1913. Owing to Pillsbury's role in the company, both papers espoused a moderate Republican, pro-business stance.

Following Knox's death in 1944, William Loeb purchased the company, merging the Union and Leader into a single morning paper, the Manchester Union-Leader, in 1948. Under Loeb's watch, the Union-Leader moved sharply to the right. He often placed editorials on the front page and supported highly conservative candidates for public office. He dropped Manchester from the paper's masthead in the mid-1970s to emphasize the fact that it is the only statewide newspaper in New Hampshire.

On April 4, 2005, it changed its name to the New Hampshire Union Leader to reflect its statewide reach. However, it is still called the Manchester Union Leader by some residents due to its historical legacy.

The New Hampshire Sunday News was created in 1948 and later, after Loeb's attempts to start a Sunday edition of the Union-Leader failed, was purchased by the Union-Leader Corporation. The Union Leader published the Sunday News as its Sunday edition for decades but converted it to Saturday publication as of February 10, 2024.

Two notable early employees of the New Hampshire Sunday News were Ralph M. Blagden, the first managing editor,[3] and an even more prominent journalist he mentored, Benjamin C. Bradlee. Bradlee was then a reporter[4] but became executive editor of The Washington Post for nearly 30 years and was its vice president until his death in 2014.

  • Office of the Manchester Daily Union and its publisher Campbell & Hanscom in 1877
    Office of the Manchester Daily Union and its publisher Campbell & Hanscom in 1877
  • New Hampshire Union Leader building at 100 William Loeb Drive in Manchester, New Hampshire
    New Hampshire Union Leader building at 100 William Loeb Drive in Manchester, New Hampshire
  • 1916 advertisement for the then-separate Manchester Union and Manchester Leader papers
    1916 advertisement for the then-separate Manchester Union and Manchester Leader papers

Institutional pedigree

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(Scroll to view more recent mergers and events which are to the right.)[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]

Institutional pedigree chart showing significant events in the newspaper's history

Contributors

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Editorial style

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Throughout their existence, the Union Leader and its predecessors have been closely involved in state politics and during the quadrennial United States presidential election, national politics. Ever since the Loebs bought the paper, its orientation has been unyieldingly conservative (though the paper was already a reliable supporter of the GOP long before the Loebs bought it), a tradition that continued after McQuaid took over the paper. The paper's hard-hitting editorials, sometimes written by the publisher and featured on the front page, drew national attention and frequently prompted harsh criticism:

The Manchester Union Leader, practitioner of a style of knife-and-kill journalism that went out of fashion half a century ago in the rest of the country, is the primary daily paper of 40 percent of New Hampshire's population...

— Theodore Harold White, The Making of the President, 1972[14]

After 2018, when the newspaper laid off its full-time editorial writer, the Union Leader's brash editorial tone softened.

The Union Leader had endorsed Newt Gingrich in the 2012 New Hampshire Republican presidential primary,[15] Chris Christie in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries[16] Neither candidate won the primary.

In 2016, the Union Leader endorsed Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson for president—the first time in 100 years that the paper and its predecessors had not endorsed a Republican.[17]

The Union Leader remained a staunch opponent of Trump after his election. In 2020, it endorsed Democratic candidate Joe Biden for president.[18]

In 2024, publisher Brendan McQuaid announced that the paper would not endorse either "terrible" presidential candidate.

Cutbacks and reduced circulation

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In a message printed in the paper in early 2009, publisher Joseph McQuaid announced that owing to financial difficulties affecting the entire newspaper industry, the Saturday edition of the paper would no longer be distributed outside of the Greater Manchester area and that Saturday content would be moved to a combined Friday/Saturday edition.[19]

In 2015, the paper's flagship building at 100 William Loeb Drive was subdivided into parcels and offered for lease. In 2017, the Union Leader building was sold to investor Peter Levine for $3.8 million after being on the market for about four years. The newspaper leased back space to remain in the building at 100 William Loeb Drive. Three other tenants, two of them charter schools and a distributor, also were occupying space in the building at the time of the sale.[20]

On February 4, 2024, publisher Brendan J. McQuaid announced that future New Hampshire Sunday News editions would be distributed on Saturdays due to changes affecting the news industry including a shortage of labor. McQuaid explained that mail subscribers could now receive the Sunday News on Saturdays. [21]

After repeated rounds of layoffs over several years, the newspaper moved into smaller quarters in Manchester's downtown Millyard in the summer of 2024.

The newspaper said in 2011 that its daily circulation was 45,536, rising to 64,068 on Sundays. In November 2024, New Hampshire Public Radio reported that the publisher said the Sunday circulation was about 20,000.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "eCirc for Newspapers". Audit Bureau of Circulations. September 30, 2011. Archived from the original on October 27, 2012.
  2. ^ See also: Canuck letter
  3. ^ "Thomas H. MacDonald on Toll Roads". Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Transportation - Federal Highway Administration. Archived from the original on 2008-05-11. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
  4. ^ Mencher, Melvin (February 20, 2001). "Pioneer Journalists: Courage to Stand for Justice in Society". Community College Journalism Association. Archived from the original on September 8, 2004. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
  5. ^ Moore, John Weeks (1886), Moore's Historical, Biographical, and Miscellaneous Gatherings, in the Form of Disconnected Notes Relative to Printers, Printing, Publishing, and Editing of Books, Newspapers, Magazines, and Other Literary Productions, Such As the Early Publications of New England, the United States: With Many Brief Notices of Authors, Publishers, Editors, Printers, and Inventors., Concord, New Hampshire: Printed by the Republican Press Association, p. 286, OCLC 221382891.
  6. ^ Moore, John Weeks (1886), Moore's Historical, Biographical, and Miscellaneous Gatherings, in the Form of Disconnected Notes Relative to Printers, Printing, Publishing, and Editing of Books, Newspapers, Magazines, and Other Literary Productions, Such As the Early Publications of New England, the United States: With Many Brief Notices of Authors, Publishers, Editors, Printers, and Inventors., Concord, New Hampshire: Printed by the Republican Press Association, p. 291, OCLC 221382891.
  7. ^ Moore, John Weeks (1886), Moore's Historical, Biographical, and Miscellaneous Gatherings, in the Form of Disconnected Notes Relative to Printers, Printing, Publishing, and Editing of Books, Newspapers, Magazines, and Other Literary Productions, Such As the Early Publications of New England, the United States: With Many Brief Notices of Authors, Publishers, Editors, Printers, and Inventors., Concord, New Hampshire: Printed by the Republican Press Association, p. 292, OCLC 221382891.
  8. ^ Moore, John Weeks (1886), Moore's Historical, Biographical, and Miscellaneous Gatherings, in the Form of Disconnected Notes Relative to Printers, Printing, Publishing, and Editing of Books, Newspapers, Magazines, and Other Literary Productions, Such As the Early Publications of New England, the United States: With Many Brief Notices of Authors, Publishers, Editors, Printers, and Inventors., Concord, New Hampshire: Printed by the Republican Press Association, p. 364, OCLC 221382891.
  9. ^ Moore, John Weeks (1886), Moore's Historical, Biographical, and Miscellaneous Gatherings, in the Form of Disconnected Notes Relative to Printers, Printing, Publishing, and Editing of Books, Newspapers, Magazines, and Other Literary Productions, Such As the Early Publications of New England, the United States: With Many Brief Notices of Authors, Publishers, Editors, Printers, and Inventors., Concord, New Hampshire: Printed by the Republican Press Association, p. 322, OCLC 221382891.
  10. ^ Moore, John Weeks (1886), Moore's Historical, Biographical, and Miscellaneous Gatherings, in the Form of Disconnected Notes Relative to Printers, Printing, Publishing, and Editing of Books, Newspapers, Magazines, and Other Literary Productions, Such As the Early Publications of New England, the United States: With Many Brief Notices of Authors, Publishers, Editors, Printers, and Inventors., Concord, New Hampshire: Printed by the Republican Press Association, p. 363, OCLC 221382891.
  11. ^ Moore, John Weeks (1886), Moore's Historical, Biographical, and Miscellaneous Gatherings, in the Form of Disconnected Notes Relative to Printers, Printing, Publishing, and Editing of Books, Newspapers, Magazines, and Other Literary Productions, Such As the Early Publications of New England, the United States: With Many Brief Notices of Authors, Publishers, Editors, Printers, and Inventors., Concord, New Hampshire: Printed by the Republican Press Association, p. 345, OCLC 221382891.
  12. ^ Cash, Kevin R. (1975), Who the hell is William Loeb?, Manchester, New Hampshire: Amoskeag Press, LCCN 75033630, OCLC 1818375
  13. ^ American Council of Learned Societies (1959), Dictionary of American Biography, vol. XXXIII, Supplement Three, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 425, OCLC 4171403.
  14. ^ White, Theodore Harold (1973). The Making of the President, 1972. New York: Atheneum Publishers. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-689-10553-1. OCLC 679721.
  15. ^ Joseph W. McQuaid. "An Editorial: For President, Newt Gingrich" (November 27, 2011). New Hampshire Union Leader.
  16. ^ "For our safety, our future: Chris Christie for President". New Hampshire Union Leader. November 28, 2015.
  17. ^ "Union Leader of New Hampshire Endorses Gary Johnson over Donald Trump". The New York Times. September 14, 2016.
  18. ^ "Our choice is Joe Biden*". New Hampshire Union Leader. October 25, 2020.
  19. ^ McQuaid, Joseph (2009-03-30). "The newspaper news here isn't all bad, but we are making a few changes soon". New Hampshire Union Leader.
  20. ^ "Union Leader Building Sells for $3.8M in Manchester". 16 September 2017.
  21. ^ https://www.unionleader.com/news/new-union-leader-app-launched-sunday-news-moving-to-saturday-delivery-more-news-more-puzzles/article_07886548-c206-11ee-8340-8f0d3790a039.html?block_id=868819
  • Cash, Kevin. Who the Hell Is William Loeb? Manchester, NH: Amoskeag Press, 1975.
  • Roper, Scott. "Manchester Union-Leader". In Burt Feintuch and David Watters, editors, Encyclopedia of New England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.
  • Wright, James. The Progressive Yankees: Republican Reformers in New Hampshire, 1906–1916. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987.
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