Type Daily newspaper Owner(s) Forum Communications Editor Rick Lubbers | Format Broadsheet Publisher Neal Ronquist Founded 1869 | |
The Duluth News Tribune (known locally as The Tribune or "DNT") is a newspaper based in Duluth, Minnesota. While circulation is heaviest in the Twin Ports metropolitan area, delivery extends into northeastern Minnesota, northwestern Wisconsin, and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The paper has a limited distribution in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The News Tribune has been owned by Forum Communications since 2006.
Publication and ownership history
The present incarnation of the Duluth News Tribune is the outcome of the merger and takeover of several earlier publications. Duluth's first weekly newspaper, The Duluth Minnesotian, was first published by Dr. Thomas Preston Foster, an editor of the St. Paul Minnesotian, on April 24, 1869. After a year of The Duluth Minnesotian publishing unfavorable articles about city services and local politics, Duluth's Mayor Joshua Carter and local investor Jay Cooke invited the owner of Superior, Wisconsin's Superior Tribune to move his paper across the canal to Duluth. This owner, Robert C. Mitchell, published the renamed Duluth Tribune on May 4, 1870. The Duluth Tribune was soon renamed the Duluth Daily Tribune. Meanwhile, The Duluth Minnesotian merged with another local newspaper, the Duluth Weekly Herald, to become The Duluth Minnesotian-Herald in 1875., later dropping "Minnesotian" to become an evening paper,The Duluth Herald.
The first News-Tribune was created as a result of the merger of the Duluth Tribune and another daily paper, the Duluth News in 1892. In 1929, this morning paper was purchased by the The Duluth Herald. Ridder Publications, later renamed Knight Ridder Inc., bought both papers in 1936. The pair were merged in 1982 to form the News-Tribune & Herald, shortened simply to Duluth News-Tribune in 1988. In 2000, the hyphen was omitted, leaving Duluth News Tribune as the paper's title.
In 2006, The McClatchy Company purchased Knight Ridder Inc., acquiring the Duluth News Tribune in the process. The McClatchy Company decided to sell 12 of Knight Ridder's 32 daily newspapers, including the Duluth News Tribune and Minneapolis' Star Tribune, due to a company acquisition philosophy limiting purchases to "newspapers in fast-growing markets." Forum Communications, a Fargo-based media firm, announced the purchase of the News Tribune on June 7, 2006. Forum Communications publishes a number of newspapers in the region, including The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead and the Grand Forks Herald.