Kentucky New Era, KY

The same age as Major League Baseball, the periodic table, Welch’s (yes, the grape juice and jelly titan) and the company that brought us Campbell’s Chicken Noodle. Some of America’s greatest proprietorships were launched in 1869, and the Kentucky New Era was part of that class.

Deemed the oldest business in Hopkinsville, the Kentucky New Era was founded as a weekly newspaper in the winter of 1869 by lawyers Col. John Dabney Morris and Asher Graham Caruth.

Many newspapers had come and gone in Christian County; however, the New Era, as it would become known, “had a destiny of being Hopkinsville’s longest operating newspaper enterprise,” states “The Newspapers of Christian County,” published in 1980 by Christian County historian William T. Turner and a longtime New Era reporter, the late Mary D. Ferguson.

The longevity of the New Era hasn’t been without ebbs and flows in circulation, highs and lows in subscriptions and tough transitions as the business of news ever evolves.

Through new owners, editors, reporters and publishers, the New Era has remained a mainstay in the Christian County community, delivering the news but also sharing the stories of its citizens and businesses.

The early years

The Kentucky New Era wasn’t always the sole newspaper in town. The weekly Kentuckian was a strong competitor for the New Era’s weekly edition during the late 1800s. The oldest known copy of the New Era that survives is dated Jan. 27, 1871, and is part of the collection of the county historian.

The New Era’s first offices were in West’s Hall on Bridge Street, now known as West Seventh Street. Five other downtown locations housed the New Era.