Times Press

By Karl Grismer

 During the 1920's the Times-Press became so prosperous that its then owners, the Scripps-Howard interests, decided that it should have a new home. The site chosen was the southeast corner of Exchange and High, then occupied by the Music Hall, a once fine structure which had fallen upon evil days and become neglected and forlorn. The Music Hall was razed in 1929 and work on the new Times-Press building was started. To celebrate completion of the structure in the early summer of 1930, the Times issued a special edition, on June 23rd, one of the largest ever printed in the city.

The Times-Press was an excellent newspaper but it could never catch up with the Beacon Journal in circulation. One reason may have been that it was a "chain" newspaper, owned by out-of-town interests. Another reason may have been that its editorial policies were sometimes too "New Deal-ish" to please conservative Akronites.

Whatever the cause, it lost heavily in advertising during the bleak depression years and was becoming a burden to the Scripps-Howard outfit, which owned the United Press news service as well as a string of papers.

Rumors of a merger began to circulate in the late spring of 1938 but Times-Press employees were given reason to believe that if any merger materialized, it would be a case of the Times-Press taking over the Beacon Journal. They were dumbfounded, therefore, when they were informed late Saturday, August 29, 1938, that their paper was no more- it had been sold to the Beacon Journal Publishing Company.

Officials of Scripps-Howard later stated that they had decided there was room for only one newspaper in Akron and had offered to buy out John S. Knight. He wouldn't sell, Scripps-Howard stated, so they sold to him.

The Times-Press building and plant were taken over immediately by the Beacon Journal, which moved there from the fine building on the southeast corner of E. Market and Summit which it had built just ten years before. The building was later sold by the Beacon Journal to the Akron Public Library which has occupied it ever since.

Many of the old Times-Press employees, particularly those in the mechanical departments, were employed by the Beacon Journal. Some of the others went into other lines of work in Akron while still others went with papers in other cities.

 Grismer, Karl H. Akron and Summit County. Akron, OH: Summit County Historical
     Society, n.d. pgs 475-476.