Bradenton Herald is now 100 years old. Here’s a look at a century of community service.
During its 100-year history, the Bradenton Herald and its readers have experienced the best of times and the worst of times. Times that alternately tested and lifted the human spirit.
It’s been a tumultuous 100 years: wars, the Great Depression, a terrorist attack on the American homeland, the Great Recession, hurricanes, cycles of growth and development and, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic.
The newspaper has been in different buildings, had different owners and evolved with new technologies during those many decades, but the mission has never changed: to serve the reader.
The Bradenton Herald turns 100 years old on Sept. 15, 2022, as the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be receding.
Although much of the world was in quarantine, shut down or out of work during the pandemic, the Bradenton Herald never missed a beat or a publication date as its news team worked remotely to provide vital, life-saving news and information. Readers, hungry for information in the age of COVID flocked to bradenton.com to try to make sense of it all.
Birth of a newspaper
Pandemics seem to bookend the Bradenton Herald, from the current day back to Sept. 15, 1922, when R.P. Sponenbarger, publisher of the Braidentown Herald Weekly, and his partner, Robert W. Bentley, merged their newspaper with The Manatee River Journal to create The Evening Herald.
The newspaper was born just a few years after the end of the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed millions around the world.
It was a far different Manatee County in 1922. The first bridge connecting Anna Maria Island to the Bradenton mainland was completed that same year. The county’s population was about 19,000, compared to an estimated 430,000 today.
At its founding, The Bradenton Herald was located at 414 Pine Street. The street was later renamed and renumbered, updating the newspaper address to 401 13th St. W. Many of the now classic, vintage buildings on Old Main Street did not exist when the Herald was launched.
In 1925, Sponenbarger and Bentley sold the paper to the R. W. Page Corp. of Columbus, Ga.
A few months later, the R.W. Page Corp. changed the newspaper’s name to The Bradenton Herald.
The last half century
The Page family owned the Herald until 1973, when it sold it to Knight Newspapers. Knight Newspapers and Ridder Publications merged in 1974, making the Herald a Knight-Ridder newspaper.
Although the Knight Newspapers moved on from Bradenton, it left Manatee County with a lasting legacy as a Knight Foundation community.
“We are social investors who support a more effective democracy by funding free expression and journalism, arts and culture in community, research in areas of media and democracy, and in the success of American cities and towns where the Knight brothers once published newspapers,” the foundation says on its website.
The Knight-Ridder era also left the Bradenton area with a legacy: the Golden Herald Awards, which were established 45 years ago. The awards honor some of Manatee County’s best and brightest high school students. In recent years, Manatee Memorial Hospital has stepped up continue the tradition.
In 2006, the McClatchy Company bought Knight-Ridder Newspapers, including the Bradenton Herald. Two years later the Great Recession arrived, sending the national economy into a downward spiral and leaving the company with a massive debt load.
McClatchy filed for bankruptcy in 2020 to restructure its debts and to speed its shift to digital.
A few months later, the company emerged from bankruptcy and New Jersey hedge fund Chatham Asset Management LLC emerged as the new owners.
In between McClatchy’s acquisition of the Bradenton Herald and the sale to Chatham — in 2013 — the Herald relocated from 102 Manatee Avenue W. to 1111 Third Ave. W., near Bradenton City Hall and the Manatee County Administration Building.
The Third Avenue building is now owned by NDC Construction Company after the owners sold it earlier this year as a potential new location for City Hall.
“As a fully digital operation in the new age of remote work — which has always been part of the newsgathering process — the Herald is exploring the need for new office space since the Third Avenue building is no longer an option for our future,” Executive Editor Lauren Walck said.
In 2014, the previous Herald building, 102 Manatee Ave. W., was sold for $3.362 million with proceeds going into the McClatchy pension fund. The building has since been razed and the site is now home to the Aria at Bradenton apartments, which sold in 2021 for $73.5 million.
In retrospect
For a span of 42 years, from 1976 to 2018, the Bradenton Herald had only two executive editors: Wayne Poston from 1976 to 1998 and Joan Krauter from 1998 to 2018.
Poston, who went on to serve as mayor of Bradenton for 20 years, saw the Bradenton Herald through several technological evolutions, including the shift from hot type (melted lead and Lineotypes) to cold type (photo offset printing), and the arrival of the online platform, bradenton.com.
He was also at the helm of the newsroom when the Bradenton Herald shifted from afternoon to morning publication. The afternoon publication was timed to give shift workers around town fresh news as they left their workplace, he said.
“We had about 100 people in news, plus full-time Washington and Tallahassee bureaus. We never did act like a small newspaper,” Poston said. He is particularly proud of the newspaper’s coverage of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge disaster in 1980, when a freighter collision knocked out a span, killing 35 people.
Krauter is also proud of the newspaper’s tradition of editorial excellence.
“The newspaper puts history into perspective. We dug into things,” she said. “The heart and soul of the newspaper is watchdog and public service journalism.”
Some of the big stories during Krauter’s tenure included 9/11, hurricanes and the industrial contamination of Tallevast groundwater and its effect on peoples lives.
Residents of the historically Black community were kept in the dark long after officials knew about the contamination. Many residents used groundwater for drinking, cooking and bathing.
Two decades later, residents continue to deal with health issues stemming from the contamination.
Looking to the future
Bob “Buzz” Turner, who retired as publisher of the Bradenton Herald in 2008, after 43 years in the business, said the newspaper has a tradition of being a guiding light and a force for good in the community.
In addition to journalism, the newspaper helped move the community forward with any number of programs, which endure to this day, including the small business awards which it started in cooperation with the Manatee Chamber of Commerce, Turner said.
The Herald’s current editor, Lauren Walck, joined the newsroom in late 2021 and brings a background of accountability journalism and digital transformation.
“The pace of technological change continues to accelerate for our industry and many others, and we are more prepared than ever to evolve with it,” Walck said.
From hot metal typesetting, to manually cutting and pasting paper layouts, to the first website of the dot-com era, to a new age of algorithms and social media, the Herald has always adapted and changed with the times.
“The Bradenton Herald remains focused on serving the needs of readers in Manatee County and providing information in a way that is the most useful to the most people,” she said. “In 2022, that means we are a fully digital operation focused on providing news in real-time online via our website, newsletters and social media.”
“And with the support of readers, we plan on being around for another 100 years.”
This story was originally published September 15, 2022 at 12:18 PM.
