Publisher

The Daily Mail has a lineage back to Greene County’s very first newspaper - The Catskill Packet -- which was actually started in 1792, eight years before the county was formed. After two changes, it became the Catskill Recorder in 1804, and by 1871 was simply The Recorder, which, despite a number of interim name changes, it still was in 1938. After another merger, it became the Examiner-Recorder until 1962, when it morphed into the Greene County News, which in turn became absorbed by the Daily Mail in 2003. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail got its direct start with The Catskill Morning Mail, a daily that began Nov. 25, 1879. Two years later, Nov. 1, 1881, it became simply the Daily Mail, and, with similar minimal variation, has published as such ever since. The Watertown Daily Times story dates back to 1861 and the New York Daily Reformer, a four-page publication of about 1,500 circulations, whose editorial columns spoke vigorously for the abolition of slavery, a free public school system, temperance, and local political reform. The Reformer office of the Civil War era was a small, three-story brick building on Arcade Street, partially surrounded by pasture. On its Stone Street side, circus tents would set up during summer visits to the North Country and on its north side, a two-story structure housed the “Invalid Corps” for soldiers recovering from illness or war wounds and still not strong enough to return to battle. In good weather, the corps held daily drills in front of their barracks and The Reformer’s office. In 1870, The Reformer took its present name, the Watertown Daily Times. The modern era of The Watertown Daily Times began early in this century when Harold B. Johnson of Gouverneur, in St. Lawrence County, joined the staff as a reporter in 1904. Having newspaper experience in Oregon and Montana, Mr. Johnson had been The Times Gouverneur correspondent before joining the city staff. At age 22, he was only three years away from the city editorship. In 1918, he was promoted to managing editor and later, became editor and president of the Brockway Company, then the parent firm of The Times. Under his direction, the paper broadened its coverage of northern New York, tightened the network of correspondents, and extended coverage to Albany and Washington. The Watertown Daily Times remains today the smallest newspaper in the nation to have its own Washington bureau. In 1932, Mr. Johnson acquired complete control of the Brockway Company and became the paper’s publisher. Upon his death in 1949, his son, John B. Johnson, succeeded him as editor and publisher. The Brockway Company was restructed in 1970 to become the Johnson Newspaper Corporation. It has grown to include papers throughout New York state including dailies in Watertown, Batavia, Malone, Ogdensburg, Massena, Potsdam, Catskill and Hudson. Weeklies are published in Carthage, Lowville, Chatham, Windham, Stamford, Livingston County, Ulster County, and St. Lawrence County. Pennysavers are published for Jefferson County, the Batavia area, and the Hudson valley region. In addition, the Watertown Daily Times prints the Fort Drum Blizzard and the Batavia Daily News has for several years printed USA Today for western and central New York. Revolutionary advances in newspaper production have occurred since The Times’ inception more than one hundred forty years ago. Then, farmers furnished wood to fuel the steam boilers of the press in return for subscriptions. Type was hand set and the Taylor cylinder press labored to produce a mere 1,000 copies per hour. The computer age has brought changes unimaginable to the newspaper reader of 1861. Today’s offset press produces sharp, full-color photography and can produce 50,000 copies per hour. A major renovation of the building in 1995 readied the facilities for the change from cut and paste page assembly to computer-driven pagination. Each page of The Times is now created and assembled electronically using a state-of-the-art technically advanced computer network. In the late 1990s, circulation, advertising, and financial operations were streamlined throughout all divisions with new computer software linking all properties. During the fall of 2001, the website at WatertownDailyTimes.com went online to service our readers throughout the world. The, site, which includes local news, sports, weather, births, weddings, obituaries, classified ads, editorials and featured articles, is updated daily to keep Times subscribers in touch with what’s going on back home. Times online archives are also available online. Watertown Daily Times stories from March 1988 to the present can be accessed with a click of the mouse at WatertownDailyTimes.com. In the spring of 2002, construction was completed on a new printing facility in Massena, the Johnson Newspaper Center. This new state-of-the-art facility replaces printing operations in Ogdensburg and Malone and will now serve as a central printing and distribution point for the St. Lawrence County Newspapers Corporation and the Malone Telegram. On September 30, 2002, the Watertown Daily Times transitioned from publishing an afternoon to morning newspaper. Today, the Johnson Newspaper Corporation remains a family-owned and operated business. Following John B. Johnson’s death on May 2, 2001, his son John B. Johnson Jr. assumed the roles of editor/co-publisher of The Times and chairman of the board/chief executive officer of the Johnson Newspaper Corp. John B. Johnson’s son, Harold B. Johnson II, assumed the roles of general manager/co-publisher of The Times and president/chief operating officer of the Johnson Newspaper Corporation. John B. Johnson Jr.’s son, John B. Johnson, joined the family business in August 2007 as Advertising and Marketing Director. With daily advances in technology, the Johnson family remains committed to excellence in reporting the daily news and delivering a total package of information to our readers.