Sun Herald celebrates 136 years of covering local news
The Sun Herald’s birth 136 years ago today was the result of a $500 investment, a finicky old hand press that printed 50 pages an hour and an ambitious Northern newspaper editor who saw promising development in the sleepy Southern region known as the Mississippi Gulf Coast, population 22,000.
George Washington Wilkes later admitted he started The Biloxi Herald with “little acquaintance and less money.”
The Illinois native could not know that his newspaper would become a centenarian and master covering disasters as well as prosperity, receiving the coveted Pulitzer Gold Metal for Hurricane Katrina coverage. He certainly could not know his 1884 creation would literally fly to the moon and one day be delivered via cyber space.
Wilkes chose Biloxi because the 1,540 who lived within its city limits on publication day — Oct. 4, 1884 — showed promise, as did the mixed coastal and pineywoods region. But no one knows what those first Heralds reported because a downtown fire destroyed his first four years of work, along with his 50-year-old press and office.
Wilkes thought insurance would cover the losses, but his wild-catting agent vamoosed. Culling his memory, Wilkes collected money owed from advertisers and borrowed more to buy a newer flatbed press. Another fire in 1890 destroyed 90 businesses and homes, but not the Herald, a fact Wilkes attributed to coating his roof with asbestos after his first losses.
Through more Coast fires, wars, yellow fever and flu epidemics, destructive hurricanes, oil spills, the Great Depression and assorted financial recessions, the Herald has persevered, as has its readers. The newspaper’s name changed to reflect the region’s blossoming as an economic force, first in 1898 by adding “daily” to the name.
From the beginning, Wilkes treated his Herald as a spark to ignite the lumbering and fishing, and later the tourism, farming and industrial engines that would carry his newspaper and its progeny into the 21st Century as The Sun Herald. Three later owners — State Record Co., Knight Ridder and McClatchy — would expand Wilkes’ path.
So who was G.W. Wilkes? Obviously named after the country’s first president, he was working at The Democrat Star in Pascagoula when he and fellow newsman M.B. Thompson decided to launch their own newspaper in Biloxi. His publication would outlast more than 10 other Coast newspapers.
Wilkes was then 30 and starting a family with children to carry on the Herald tradition for 53 years after his 1915 death. Thompson was a noted Mississippi Civil War veteran who disappeared from the scene before the first year was up. Through the years, Wilkes would hire a cadre of respected editors, and Wilkes’s wife, Laurie also worked at the office. By 1900 the Herald staff numbered 10.
The four-page weekly Saturday paper covered more of the Coast than Biloxi, with the first years mixing local news writing and editorializing with society events. A wire service supplied stories of national and regional interest, including chapters of novels.
Soon, Wilkes was respected across the region, a fact evident in the words of Charles Dyer, who in 1894 traveled by train from New Orleans to Mobile, photographing and writing about each town along the way. Dyer’s work was published the next year in the book, “Along the Gulf.”
“Biloxi is also well off in regard to newspapers, as there are three published here and the town is fortunate in having among these three one of the most prominent and influential newspapers in the entire state. The paper referred to is the ‘Biloxi Herald,’ owned and edited by Mr. George W. Wilkes, a newspaper in every sense of the word.” Dyer wrote.
“...as the official journal both of Harrison County and the City of Biloxi, its editorial expressions of opinions carry a great deal of weight. It is safe to state there is not a finer equipped newspaper and job office in the state than this.”
In 1909 the Herald began printing both Gulfport and Biloxi editions. Gulfport was only 11 years old but Wilkes believed its rapid growth demanded coverage. From the beginning, he understood the panache of a good newspaper in spurring Coast development.
The Wilkes era ended in 1968 when the family sold to State Record, a small family-run North Carolina newspaper chain that modernized the 84-year-old paper with editorials, broader Coast coverage, a Sunday edition and even a morning edition called The South Mississippi Sun.
During the State Record era, Apollo 13 Astronaut Fred Haise carried a miniature Daily Herald to the moon in honor of his Biloxi hometown and his Herald stint as a cub reporter.
With Knight Ridder ownership starting in 1986 and McClatchy in 2006, the award-winning Sun Herald has survived America’s changing reading habits, lost advertising revenue and a proliferation of competitive media that have caused more than one-fifth of America’s local newspapers to shut down.
Technological innovations have altered the way news is covered, reported and presented, but in the 21st Century the philosophy of founder G.W Wilkes still echoes:
“The Herald has no higher ambition in the fulfillment of its journalistic mission than to contribute to the peace and harmony and spirit of good will in the community.”
Kat Bergeron, a veteran feature writer specializing in Gulf Coast history and sense of place, is retired from the Sun Herald. She writes the Mississippi Coast Chronicles column as a freelance correspondent. Reach her at BergeronKat@gmail.com or at Southern Possum Tales, P.O. Box 33, Barboursville, VA 22923.
This story was originally published October 4, 2020 at 12:00 AM.