History
Before its 2005 sale to CNHI, The Eagle-Tribune and its predecessors had been owned by the Rogers family for more than 100 years, dating back to the purchase of the Lawrence Daily Eagle (founded as a morning paper in 1868) and Evening Tribune (founded in Lawrence in 1890) by Eagle reporter Alexander H. Rogers in 1898.
Rogers passed the role of publisher to his son, Irving E. Rogers Sr., in 1942; he passed it along to his son, Irving Jr., 40 years later. After his death in 1998, the fourth and last generation of Rogers owners took over, in the person of Irving E. "Chip" Rogers III.
During the first Irving Rogers' tenure, the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune was founded in 1959 by finally merging the company's two newspapers into one afternoon paper. Irving Rogers Sr. was also the publisher who moved the company to new headquarters in North Andover.
During Rogers family ownership, the paper dropped "Lawrence" from its nameplate.
Former Lawrence Mayor John J. Buckley, in 1990, lauded The Eagle-Tribune for helping the city bounce back from the closure of several mills in the 1950s. He said the paper championed economic redevelopment in its editorials and news articles, and persuaded companies such as Avco, Honeywell and Raytheon to open plants in Lawrence.
In 2005, the Rogers family, which had owned The Eagle-Tribune for generations, sold the newspaper and its subsidiaries—including three other Massachusetts dailies and several weeklies—to Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. of Alabama, for an undisclosed amount of money. Rogers initially stayed on as publisher, but was replaced as publisher later that year.
The paper went through a minor labor dispute in January 2006, after several staff members attempted to start a union. As part of a move to beef up The Eagle-Tribune's presence in New Hampshire, the paper reassigned several staff members to a satellite bureau in Derry, New Hampshire -- days after a union vote. Some of the workers said they were being punished for being on a union organizing committee; they said other members of the committee were switched to less desirable night beats. Spokesmen for CNHI said the moves were unrelated to the union vote, which failed.
March 2006 brought the daily paper's conversion from an afternoon to a morning newspaper. Since some home delivery subscribers may not get their paper until 8-830am (after they leave for work), those people still believe it is an afternoon paper.
Read more about this topic: The Eagle-Tribune
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