Sun Herald

205 DeBuys Road

Gulfport, MS 39507

(228) 896-2100

(800) 346-5022

Mission Statement: The Sun Herald is South Mississippi’s newspaper. As recognized with the 2006 Pulitzer Gold Medal for Public Service, the Sun Herald has dedicated itself to recording the history and telling the stories of the diverse communities comprising the Mississippi Gulf Coast for more than 125 years. As the flagship of a multi-media company, the Sun Herald reaches not only 137,000 print readers each week, but more than 263,000 South Mississippians read the Sun Herald or one of its sister publications in print or online every week. Through its web site (SunHerald.com), the Sun Herald shares the news of South Mississippi with more than a million unique visitors every month.

Founded: Launched as a weekly newspaper in Biloxi in 1884, the Herald expanded to the new city of Gulfport in 1905 and, in 1934, became the afternoon Daily Herald. In 1968, the Saturday edition was moved from evening to morning publication to make room for a new Sunday edition. In 1973, the newspaper’s publisher launched a new morning newspaper, the South Mississippi Sun. In 1985, the morning Sun and afternoon Daily Herald were merged into an all-day Sun Herald, which one year later dropped the evening edition and became a 7-day morning newspaper. That same year, the newspaper became part of the Knight Ridder newspaper family, as part of Knight Ridder’s purchase of the State Record Company of Columbia, SC, which had previously purchased the Daily Herald from the Wilkes family in 1968. With McClatchy Newspaper’s purchase of Knight Ridder in 2006, the Sun Herald and its print and online readers became part of the McClatchy multi-media family.

Key Executives:

Blake Kaplan, General Manager and Executive Editor

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General Hiring Contact: Human Resources Manager Natalie Piner at 228-896-2432 or e-mail npiner@sunherald.com

Market: The Mississippi Coast market includes the Biloxi-Gulfport-Pascagoula MSA and the Biloxi-Gulfport DMA. The six-county region includes 460,000 people in 15 incorporated cities and more than 25 census designated places. The area is known for its seafood, shipbuilding and tourism. Mississippi is the nation’s third largest gaming market and the Mississippi Coast is home to 11 major casino resort properties. It is also home to Keesler Air Force Base, the electronic and cyberwarfare training center of the U.S. Air Force and the headquarters of the famed “Hurricane Hunters;” the US Naval Construction Battalion Center, home to the Atlantic Fleet Seabees; NASA’s John C. Stennis Space Center; and several other major federal facilities.

Circulation Area: 6 counties in South Mississippi.

Site: Home delivery is available throughout Harrison, Hancock and west Jackson counties, along with southern Stone County. In addition, single copy sales reach north into Forrest County and extend from the Louisiana to the Alabama border. Additionally, the newspapers E-edition serves readers in more remote areas of South Mississippi.

Website: http://www.sunherald.com

Online audience: 5 million page views per month; 500,000 unique monthly visitors.

Combined audience (print and online): 263,000 weekly

Pulitzer Prizes: 2006 Gold Medal for Public Service Journalism.

McClatchy News Ethics Policy

These ethical guidelines for McClatchy newsrooms outline the values and standards that guide our journalism. No policy can address every conflict that may arise in our day-to-day work. It’s the responsibility of each McClatchy journalist to use good judgment and confer with news managers if the answer to an ethical question is not completely clear.

This story was originally published September 22, 2015 at 10:25 AM.