Daily Herald (Arlington Heights) - History

History

Hosea C. Paddock, a former teacher, founded the paper as the Arlington Heights Herald in 1871. For its first century, it was a weekly publication. Over the years, Paddock, and later his son Stuart, acquired several other weekly newspapers in the northern Chicago suburbs.

The paper's real growth began in 1968, when Stuart Paddock, Jr. took over the paper. A year later, the paper began publishing five days a week. This move came almost out of necessity; Field Communications, publisher of the Sun-Times, had introduced its "Daily" papers for the northern suburbs in 1966. A brutal one-year circulation war ensued, ending in 1970 when Field pulled out of the area. That year, the paper dropped Arlington Heights from its masthead after merging with its sister publications and expanding into Lake County. It began publishing on Saturdays in 1975. It became the Daily Herald in 1977 and began publishing on Sundays in 1978. During the second half of the 1980s, it expanded into DuPage, Kane and McHenry counties. Its growth has continued to this day. Stuart Paddock, Jr. died in 2002. Today, the Daily Herald's motto is, "Big picture. Local Focus" because it covers both international and national news as well as news local to its circulation area.