Julie Swidwa

The Herald-Palladium

The Herald-Palladium has held its current name since 1975, but it can trace its genealogy back to 1868. Leonard G. Merchant started the Benton Harbor Palladium as a weekly in 1868, and sold it the following year to J.P. Thresher. The Palladium went through several ownerships until being acquired by Frank Gibson, who in 1886 converted it into the Daily Palladium. Merchant left Benton Harbor for St. Joseph in 1877. He bought a weekly, The Traveler and Herald and renamed it the St. Joseph Herald. Shortly after the turn of the century, Merchant and his son, Leonard E., sold their property to Ephriam W. Moore who published as The Evening Herald. Competing dailies moved into both cities around the turn of the century. John Nellis Klock, J. Stanley Morton and Humphrey S. Gray established The Evening News in Benton Harbor in 1895. In 1905, Willard Brewer, Moore's nephew, bought The St. Joseph Press, a weekly created in 1888, and changed it to a daily. By 1904, The Evening News had displaced The Daily Palladium as the dominant paper in Benton Harbor. Gibson that year sold his paper to Klock, who consolidated the two papers into The News-Palladium. In 1910, the paper was sold to Moore. In 1916, Brewer and Moore merged their St. Joseph publications into The Herald-Press. In 1919, Moore retired and sold The News-Palladium to Palladium Publishing Co. incorporated that year by Klock, Stanley R. Banyon and Willard J. Banyon Sr. In 1928, the company bought out The Herald-Press Co. The two companies continued to publish two papers. In 1965, the company shifted production of The Herald-Press to The News-Palladium's plant. In 1975, The Herald-Press and The News-Palladium became The Herald-Palladium. In 1985, Palladium Publishing sold the newspaper to Thomson Inc. Thomson operated the paper until 1996, when it sold The Herald-Palladium to the Community Newspapers Division of Hollinger International. Hollinger sold the newspaper in 2000 to Paxton Media Group Inc. of Paducah, Ky.