The History of the Fort Worth Gazette: A Pioneer Newspaper in North Texas

The Fort Worth Gazette was a prominent newspaper in North Texas between 1882 and 1896 and one of the earliest sources of day-to-day events in Fort Worth. Its first issue was published on June 30, 1882, by the Stock Journal Publishing Company, soon renamed the Loving Publishing Company after manager George B. Loving. The company had purchased the Fort Worth Democrat-Advance, at the time the only daily newspaper in Fort Worth; combined the resources of its Texas Live Stock Journal with those of the Democrat-Advance; and renamed the latter the Fort Worth Daily Gazette, which operated as the only daily newspaper in North Texas west of the Trinity River.

The paper was welcomed by Fort Worthians and continued the success of its predecessor. Claiming to serve North, Central, and West Texas, the publication launched as an eight-page daily paper with 6,000 subscribers paying an annual subscription of ten dollars. By 1884 a sister paper, the Fort Worth Weekly Gazette, was launched. That year the publishers boasted that the Weekly Gazette was adding between 800 and 1,000 subscribers per month and had “[a]n unswerving devotion to Texas as a unit.” The annual subscription was one dollar. B. B. Paddock, former editor of the Democrat-Advance, was the first editor of the Gazette. Paddock and his successor, Walter Malone, emphasized promoting the industrial and economic progress of Fort Worth. The Gazette was circulated throughout Texas. The paper was affiliated with the Democratic party but maintained that its mission was simply “to give the news.” It strongly favored the free grass and free silver movements.

Financial indebtedness plagued the paper from its onset, and the publication changed hands several times. In 1883 it was acquired by the Fort Worth Publishing Company. In 1884 Loving purchased the paper, which he then sold to a firm composed of himself, Malone, and John O. Ford. The following year Loving again became the paper’s sole proprietor after bidding $10,000 to acquire the Gazette, the Live Stock Journal, and the Texas Wool Grower. He and a number of local businessmen then incorporated the Gazette Company, headed by Paddock, to take over the Gazette. In August 1885, after indebtedness forced a brief suspension of the paper, Loving and his brother, J. C., raised additional funds to remove the Gazette’s debt, and the paper resumed its publication under the Gazette Company. Shortly thereafter it was acquired by the Democrat Publishing Company headed by K. M. Van Zandt.

Following the departure of Paddock, Malone served as the managing editor of the Gazette until 1891. Under his direction, the Gazette achieved one of the highest circulations in the state. Malone added new sections to the daily paper, including short stories and ladies’ columns. From 1885 to 1886 the Sunday edition grew to twelve pages, then sixteen, and finally to twenty-page issues. On January 1, 1889, Malone published a special edition of the Daily Gazette dedicated to Fort Worth’s history. After Malone’s resignation, Erasmus G. Senter succeeded as the Gazette’s third and final editor. In 1888 a joint subscription to the Weekly Gazette and Texas Farm and Ranch was offered for $1.25 per year. In 1891 the Democrat Publishing Company suspended the publication of the Weekly Gazette, and the Daily Gazette was thereafter published as the Fort Worth Gazette. The Gazette was acquired by the Gazette Company in 1893 and by the State Printing Company the following year.

In June 1896 publication of the paper was suspended after proprietors could not meet a $30,000 mortgage held by the Central Trust Company of New York. The Dallas Morning News took over the Gazette’s subscription list, and by the end of the year, the publishing plant had been sold to Selden R. Williams, former general manager of the Gazette and later president of the Stock and Farm Journal Company. Critics of the Gazette pointed to the paper’s support for free silver, which they argued had alienated business interests, as a major factor in the paper’s dissolution. The Galveston Tribune opined that the Gazette “was an extremely partisan paper” that had lost the confidence of its readers. The Gazette was succeeded by the Fort Worth Register, a forerunner to the Fort Worth Record, which was ultimately acquired by Amon G. Carter’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram.