The Albany Democrat-Herald is the daily newspaper of Albany, Oregon, United States. Lee Enterprises owns both the Democrat-Herald and the Corvallis Gazette-Times. The two papers publish a joint Sunday edition, the Mid-Valley Times. The newspaper covers Albany, Lebanon, Jefferson, Halsey, Tangent, Harrisburg, Brownsville, Shedd, and Sweet Home.
The Democrat-Herald started as a political tool for one of Oregon's first senators. It was suppressed several times during the Civil War for its Confederate leanings before being reborn in 1865. It was first published as a weekly, then as a daily since the 1870s.
The Democrat-Herald traces its origin to the Albany Democrat newspaper, founded by Delazon Smith in 1859. The Albany Herald began in the 1880s. Its founder later helped establish Oregon’s Crater Lake National Park. Both the Democrat and the Herald were dailies in the 1880s and merged after the Democrat bought out the Herald for $25,000 in 1925.
George S. Turnbull, a former University of Oregon School of Journalism professor from 1917 to 1948, was an associate editor at the newspaper after he retired from teaching. He died in 1977. The university's Portland journalism branch is named in his honor.
The Democrat-Herald and other Oregon newspapers were bought by Capital Cities. Disney sold the paper to Lee Enterprises in 1998 after it bought Capital Cities. Today, the Democrat-Herald has a circulation of about 18,000.
Having always been an afternoon newspaper on weekdays with a delivery deadline of 5:30 P.M., on October 4, 2010, it became a morning paper every day with a deadline of 6:30 A.M. on weekdays and 7:00 A.M. on weekends.