Pieces of Phoenix History
For some, a piece of their childhood and adult lives was suddenly gone.
For others, there go to source for news that impacts them and their city was suddenly gone.
In January of 1997 — after 116 years of providing readers with written content — the Phoenix Gazette published their last paper, signaling the end of an era in one of the largest cities in the United States.
Founded in 1881, it was known as the Phoenix Evening Gazette. Charles Stauffer and W. Wesley Knorpp, the owners of the Gazette’s biggest rival, the Arizona Republic, purchased the paper in 1930.
Stauffer was the owner and publisher of both the Gazette and the Republic, which when it began was called the Arizona Republican. Stauffer graduated from Arizona State University and a building, Stauffer Communication Arts on the Tempe Campus in Forrest Mall is named after him. Stauffer and Knorpp are known best for changing the name of the paper from the Republican to the Republic in 1930.
The Phoenix area’s main source of news for many decades at night was the Gazette. In the 1970s and 1980s, the paper expanded their coverage to weekday and Sunday afternoons.
The Phoenix Gazette covered everything from news to politics, to sports and entertainment.
But in August 1995, the Republic and Gazette merged and the Gazette was reduced to a afternoon edition of the Republic. As you may expect, its influence decreased and so did its readership and circulation.
The Gazette was huge during the rise of the Phoenix Suns, a professional basketball team that quickly became Phoenix’s premiere team. They covered the daily activities of the team and the 25th anniversary of the franchise.
Joe Gilmartin, a longtime Phoenix sports writer and editor, wrote about the Suns for the Gazette and he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2014.
Some of the most notable names at the Gazette were described by someone who used to write for the publication in an article he wrote himself for the Tuscon Citizen in January 1997, the time when the Gazette folded.
Esther Clark wrote for the Phoenix Gazette and is known for being the first female military writer. She was in the Marines. Robert C. Dyer, who was also a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks front office, worked for the Gazette.
Unfortunately as a broader context, newspapers laying off employees and folding, as the Gazette did, has become a common thing in our society as digital media has grown, especially since the early 2000s, as the Pew Research Center has found.
Just from 2015 to 2016, daily newspaper circulation in the United States declined eight percent, falling to 35 million and has only declined more since.
But the Gazette’s impact on Phoenix and the Phoenix-area and the importance it played in many people’s lives during a time when people relied on newspapers to find out what happened.
One day, print newspapers will become extinct. The day that happens will be a sad one for many.
