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Our history goes back as far as the presidency of Andrew Jackson. The newspaper began publication in 1829 and was called The Planter°s Gazette. It became the Montgomery Advertiser in 1833 and emerged as the leading newspaper of the new Confederate states by 1861.After the Civil War, Major William Wallace Screws, a Confederate veteran, became the editor and began to lead the publication toward editorial prominence in Alabama. By the turn of the century, the Advertiser was a major voice in the state.In 1903, R.F. Hudson, a young Alabama newspaperman, joined the staff of the Advertiser and began moving up through the ranks of the Company. He helped to lead the paper toward financial success, and by 1924 he owned 10% of the stock in the Company. In 1935, he bought it outright and five years later he bought The Alabama Journal, a competitor that had been in publication in Montgomery since 1889. In 1940 the paper moved to Washington Avenue. In 1963, the newspapers were purchased by Carmage Walls as the largest property in his growing list of Southern newspapers. It was under Walls' tenure that the quality of the newspaper began to improve under newspaper-group ownership. Following the sale of papers to Multimedia, in 1968, this diversified communications Company continued to upgrade the quality of the newspaper by adding skilled personnel and modern publishing equipment.Together, the Advertiser and Journal have garnered more Pulitzer Prizes than have all other newspapers in Alabama combined and more than all but 25 newspapers in the nation today. The first came in 1928 after the Advertiser waged war on the resurgent Ku Klux Klan. Grover C. Hall Sr., who had worked for the Advertiser since 1910, gained national recognition for himself and the daily paper with his editorials against the group. Harold Martin, editor and publisher, won the Pulitzer in 1970 with a series that ran in both papers on drug experimentation in state prisons. And in 1988, The Journal, under the leadership of publisher Dick Amberg and editors Bill Brown and Jim Tharpe, won the coveted award for its series on infant mortality in Alabama. In fact, the Advertiser/Journal won more top awards in 1988 than any other newspaper in the United States.On April 19, 1993, history was made again as Montgomery's only afternoon paper merged with the morning paper, becoming the Montgomery Advertiser, incorporating the Alabama Journal. The next major event happened in December 1995, when Gannett Corporation merged with Multimedia which included the Montgomery Advertiser.In the fall/winter of 1998, the Montgomery Advertiser earned the prestigious International Newspaper Color Quality Club Award. The International Newspaper Color Quality Club is an honor awarded to newspapers who have demonstrated a commitment to quality reproduction. The award is based on the evaluation of precision and balance of color, quality of photographs and images printed on the press as well as the lack of production errors. Evaluations were based on a specific color control target reproduced under our specific conditions and evaluated by the Newspaper Association of America in conjunction with its European counterpart, IFRA. Out of the 157 dailies from 27 countries who participated, only 37 successfully made acceptance to the club. The Montgomery Advertiser was one of only two Gannett sites (Rochester Democrat & Chronicle) accepted. We share this honor with The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and The New York Times. The newspaper office moved in 2002 to new quarters at 425 Molton St. The new office is in a building adjacent to the company's production and distribution facility.

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