Quincy Media, Inc., formerly known as Quincy Newspapers, Inc., is a family-owned media company that originated in the newspapers of Quincy, Illinois. The company’s history can be traced back to 1835, when the Bounty Land Register was one of four newspapers in Illinois. Over the next century, a number of mergers followed. The company moved into radio in 1947 and began television broadcasts in 1953. It is owned by the Oakley and Lindsay families of Quincy.
The corporation was formed in Quincy on June 1, 1926, as a publishing company upon the consolidation of the Quincy Herald, a direct descendant of the Illinois Bounty Land Register first published in Quincy in 1835, and the Quincy Whig-Journal, descendant of the Quincy Whig founded in 1838.
The Herald was purchased in September 1891 by three men from Rockford, Charles L. Miller, Hedley John Eaton, and Edmund Botsford. Miller had earlier founded the Rockford Daily Register, that city’s oldest newspaper. Subsequently, Miller brought to the Herald his brother-in-law and nephew, respectively, Aaron Burr Oakley and Ray M. Oakley, the first two generations of the Oakleys in the newspaper business in Quincy. Miller spent four years in Quincy, returning to Rockford in 1896 to join Harry M. Johnson in ownership of the Rockford Republic. He retired as editor of the Republic in 1913 and died in 1921. Hedley Eaton retired in 1913 and died in 1936. Eaton’s son John Dewitt Eaton stayed with the paper as Advertising Manager until his retirement in 1955.
On October 29, 2018, Quincy announced it would be acquiring KVOA in Tucson, Arizona, from Cordillera Communications for $70 million as a side deal of the latter company’s acquisition by the E. W. Scripps Company. Two days later, on October 31, Quincy announced that it would be acquiring WSIL-TV in Harrisburg, Illinois, and KPOB, Poplar Bluff, MO, from Mel Wheeler, Inc. for $24.5 million.
On May 10, 2019, Quincy announced it would purchase the Hannibal Courier-Post from GateHouse Media, marking its first daily newspaper expansion since 1969. Six days later, on May 16, Quincy announced the sale of the New Jersey Herald to GateHouse Media, ending Quincy’s 50-year ownership of the paper.
Newspapers
Herald-Whig, Quincy, Illinois
Hannibal Courier-Post, Hannibal, Missouri
Radio stations
WGEM-AM – 1440 – Sports Radio
WGEM-FM – 105.1 – News/Talk
