DETROIT FREE PRESS

daily newspaper, one of the most widely circulated in the U.S., published in Detroit, Mich. Founded by Sheldon McKnight, The Democratic Free Press and Michigan Intelligencer was first published in 1831, when Detroit was a small frontier town. The first daily newspaper in Michigan, the Free Press championed statehood for the territory and was one of the first American newspapers to publish a Sunday edition, beginning in 1853. The Free Press became noted for its coverage of the American Civil War; later in the century it added feature writers and columnists, including the poet Edgar A. Guest, and it initiated a women's section and a Washington, D.C., bureau. It retained its editorial independence after it was bought by John S. Knight in 1940, and also after the Knight Ridder newspapers were merged in 1974. Extended competition between the Detroit Free Press and the daily Detroit News, owned by the Gannett newspaper chain, resulted in heavy financial losses by both newspapers and the threatened collapse of the Free Press. In 1989, following the approval of the U.S. Attorney General, the papers' advertising, business, production, and circulation departments were combined under a Joint Operating Agreement (JOA) into a new company, the Detroit Newspaper Agency, owned equally by Knight Ridder and Gannett. The two newspapers retained distinct editorial staffs and continued to publish separate daily editions, although they published combined Saturday and Sunday editions. The Free Press led the News in circulation in the early years after the JOA.