The Mercury News (formerly San Jose Mercury News, often referred to as The Merc) is a daily morning newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Bay Area News Group, a subsidiary of Digital First Media, publishes it. With a daily circulation of 611,194 as of March 2013, it was the fifth-largest daily newspaper in the United States. As of 2018, the paper had a daily circulation of 324,500 and a Sunday circulation of 415,200. This had decreased further by 2021. The Bay Area News Group now reports “readership” rather than circulation. They reported a daily “readership” of 312,700 adults in 2021. The Mercury News, first published in 1851, is the Santa Clara Valley’s only English-language daily newspaper. After a series of mergers, it became the Mercury News in 1983. Knight Ridder owned it for much of the twentieth century. Because of its location in Silicon Valley, Mercury News has covered many of the most important events in computing history, and it was a pioneer in delivering news online. It was the first newspaper in the United States to publish in three languages.
The Mercury News, as it is now known, was founded in 1851 or 1852. California legislators had just moved the state capital from San Jose to Vallejo, causing the Argus and State Journal, San Jose’s first two newspapers, to fail. The San Jose Weekly Visitor was founded by a group of three businessmen led by John C. Emerson. The Weekly Visitor began as a Whig publication but quickly switched to the Democratic Party. In 1852, it was renamed the Santa Clara Register. The following year, Francis B. Murdoch purchased the newspaper and merged it with the San Jose Telegraph. In 1860, W. A. Slocum took over the Telegraph and merged it with the San Jose Mercury or Weekly Mercury to form the Telegraph and Mercury. William N. Slocum soon dropped the name Telegraph. The Mercury was one of two newspapers in San Jose at this point.
In the spring of 1861, James Jerome Owen, a forty-niner, and former Republican New York assemblyman became the Mercury’s publisher, later acquiring a controlling interest in the paper with a partner, Benjamin H. Cottle. For three months in the fall of 1861, the paper was published daily as the San Jose Daily Mercury, then from August 1869 to April 1870 with the addition of J. J. Conmy as a partner, and again on March 11, 1872, after the purchase of the Daily Guide. Owen founded the Mercury Printing and Publishing Company in 1878.
Owen proposed lighting San Jose with a moonlight tower in 1881. That year, the San Jose electric light tower was dedicated. According to the Mercury, San Jose was the first town west of the Rocky Mountains to have electricity.
In 1884, the Mercury merged with the Times Publishing Company, owned by Charles M. Shortridge. The Daily Morning Times and Daily Mercury were briefly known as the Times-Mercury, while the Weekly Times and Weekly Mercury were briefly known as the Times-Weekly Mercury. Both publications adopted the San Jose Mercury name in 1885. Owen sold his stake in the paper that year and relocated to San Francisco.
The Mercury News is the largest tenant in the Towers at San Jose’s second high-rise office complex. The seventh floor of 4 North Second Street houses business functions, while the eighth floor houses news staff and executives, totaling 33,186 square feet. The Mercury News is printed and produced at the Bay Area News Group’s facilities in Concord and Hayward in the East Bay.
The Mercury and News were originally published from various locations in downtown San Jose. The papers were headquartered in a 36-acre (15 ha) campus in suburban North San Jose, abutting the Nimitz Freeway, from February 1967 to September 2014. (then State Route 17, now Interstate 880). The Web staff was initially housed alongside the newsroom staff, but in December 1996, they relocated to downtown San Jose. Following the return of the Mercury News to downtown San Jose, Digital First Media sold the suburban campus to Super Micro Computer, Inc., which renamed it “Supermicro Green Computing Park.” Older San Jose Mercury News newsboxes have black, white, and green stripes, whereas newer Mercury News newsboxes have the paper’s logo printed in white on a blue background.
The newspaper has won several awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes: one in 1986 for reporting on political corruption during the Ferdinand Marcos administration in the Philippines, and another in 1990 for comprehensive coverage of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. David Yarnold, the assistant managing editor, was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2004 for his work on a local corruption investigation. The Society for News Design named the Mercury News one of the five best-designed newspapers in the world for work done in 2001. The newspaper received a Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Award for General Excellence, Class IV in 2007. Several staff writers and designers have won awards for their work in West magazine, a Sunday insert published by the Mercury News in the 1980s and 1990s. EPpy Awards were given to the Mercury News website in 1996, 1999, 2009, 2013, and 2014.
Print and digital subscriptions are available. Print subscriptions range from $4-14 per week. Digital subscriptions range from $14-18 per month. The print subscription includes a digital subscription as well.
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