Dispatch history

A four-page issue of The Daily Dispatch was published on July 1, 1871, for three cents. The paper, which had 800 subscribers at the time, was printed from rented headquarters at the corner of N. Hight Street and Lynn Alley -- just a few blocks away from The Columbus Dispatch's current 34 S. Third St. headquarters.

Billy Ireland's part-page cartoon "The Passing Show" makes its first appearance. Photo: This edition of The Passing Show was published on Sunday, Nov. 30, 1913.

On April 9, 1907, a fire struck the newspaper's headquarters at Gay and High Streets. It destroyed the building.

On March 3, 1901, The Columbus Dispatch printed its comics pages in color for the first time.

The first Billy Ireland part-page cartoon appeared on March 17, 1901. It was called "An Afternoon with the State House Squirrels." Ireland drew cartoons with commentary for The Dispatch for 35 years.

The Columbus Dispatch marked 100 years of newspapers on July 1, 1971. In this photo, you can see that the sign was changed to say "100 years of service."

The first full-page ad ever run in The Dispatch was for the Columbus Buggy Company.

The newspaper changed hands many times in its early years, but in 1905, brothers Harry Preston Wolfe and Robert Frederick Wolfe bought what was then called The Columbus Evening Dispatch. The brothers, owners of a Columbus shoe company, had entered the publishing business two years earlier, when they purchased the Ohio State Journal. They were sons of Andrew Jackson Wolfe, a Civil War veteran who made his living making shoes in southeastern Ohio.

A popular Dispatch columnist, Johnny Jones was one of central Ohio’s most endearing characters and an extraordinary storyteller. He wrote more than 10,000 columns during his 31 years with the paper. His column, “Now Let Me Tell You,” was widely read until his death.

This photo, taken sometime between 1907 and 1910, shows the Dispatch plant being demolished at Gay and High streets after a fire destroyed the building.

On the front page of The Columbus Sunday Dispatch on April 11, 1909, the big news was that The Dispatch had installed new presses that printed "48,000 papers per hour, or 800 a minute." The headline in the newspaper read: Monster Four-Deck Goss Presses Just Put In Commission by The Dispatch to Supply The Demands of Ever-Increasing Circulation. The public was invited to visit and watch the new presses in action.

This Billy Ireland cartoon was published in 1909, soon after Columbus' Lazarus shopping center installed the city's first escalator. Lazarus was located at Town & High streets.

Milton Caniff began work as a Dispatch artist in 1930. He later became famous for his “Terry and the Pirates” and “Steve Canyon” comic strips.

The first "Jolly Jingles" feature, by artist Dudley T. Fisher Jr., appeared on June 1, 1919. It evolved to where the activities of two girls, Annabelle and Flo, are described in verse. The feature appeared in The Dispatch for 19 years.

Columbus-born illustrator and humorist James Thurber wrote a column, "Credos and Curios," for The Columbus Evening Dispatch between 1920 and 1924. Later, he became well-known for his cartoons and short stories in The New Yorker.

During World War I, The Dispatch used a huge "electrograph" on its roof to keep readers posted on war events. The "Dispatch Bulletin" used a typewriter hooked up to electric lights to display news.

On Nov. 23, 1925, The Columbus Evening Dispatch published its first issue from new headquarters at 34 S. Third St., across from the Ohio Statehouse. It's the former site of the YMCA building, which was torn down in 1923. This photo is an aerial shot of The Dispatch building from 1929.

On Oct. 7, 1945, The Dispatch produced the first color rotogravure Sunday Magazine, which was very popular with readers for decades. The magazine’s offices included an editorial room, a photo studio, The Dispatch’s first color processing lab, and The Dispatch’s first kitchen. In this photo is the 1949 Sunday Magazine staff in their headquarters: Brad Willson, writer; Bob Wheaton, photographer; Arthur Bean, writer; Dorothy Henzy, editorial assistant; Herald Higgins, photographer; Gordon Kuster Sr., editorial director; Betty Montei, food editor; Lit Roper, copyreader; Harold Allison, compositor; Del Bodley, copy editor; and Jim Baker, art director.

In 1956, The Dispatch completed a large expansion program, and its building was extended eastward from Lazelle to Fourth Street so that it stretched an entire block, from Third Street back to Fourth Street. The addition primarily provided space to house the new 21-unit Goss Headliner press, capable of printing 96 pages at the rate of 52,500 an hour. Equipped with color half-decks, it can also print four pages in full color ROP (run of press), plus 12 other pages with one color in addition to black. In this photo, a pressman looks over paper printed Monday, January 16, 1956, the first day the Dispatch began using the new presses.

In this photo, Robert H. Wolfe, co-publisher of The Dispatch, stands in the midst of the maze of machinery as the presses go at full speed. To the right are ink control buttons, overhead is the web carrying papers to the folding machine, and at the the left is one of the 21 units of the new press, which can print 105,000 40-page papers or 52,000 96-page papers per hour.

On July 1, 1980, The Dispatch began beaming news stories through the CompuServe dial-up service. The newspaper was the first daily newspaper in the country to test a new technology that enabled the day’s news to flow into home computers at 300 words per minute. Users paid $5 per hour for the service, billed in one-minute increments. "To become a subscriber," The Dispatch reported, "a resident will have to have a home computer. Such equipment is now available in electronics shops." In this photo, Dispatch copy editor Bill Prewitt, who coordinated the newspaper-by-computer project in the news department, sits in front of computer equipment used in transmitting the electronic newspaper.

As The Dispatch staff made the move from "hot type" to "cold type," the old manual typewriters were replaced by new, electronic IBM typewriters. This photo shows a pile of the older typewriters during a 1972 newsroom remodel.?

In the late 1970s, computer terminals started to replace typewriters in the Dispatch newsroom. This photo shows a section of the newsroom on Oct. 7, 1975.

In November 1980, a new edition of the paper called the "First Edition" was introduced. It was found in coin boxes and newsstands (The Dispatch was still an afternoon newspaper at the time.) In this photo, Centennial High School student Susan Schaeffer hawks the new First Edition in front of the Dispatch building. She and many of her classmates helped sell the papers to raise $1,000 for a new copy machine for their high school.

In January 1990, The Columbus Dispatch's new production plant near Georgesville Road began full service, answering readers’ needs for more color (magazine-quality color photos, graphics and ads), later deadlines that permit more late-breaking news to get into the paper, and earlier deliveries.

On Jan. 1, 1986, The Columbus Dispatch moved to mornings and published its first morning edition. The "Early Bird" mascot introduced the switch in a marketing campaign that proclaimed, "It's a whole new morning!"

In 1981, The Dispatch began publishing an independent food section. It featured the irreverent Doral Chenoweth, who reviewed restaurants as "The Grumpy Gourmet."

In 1983, The Dispatch welcomed Mike Harden to its staff. Harden was a popular columnist who wrote for the newspaper until his death in 2010. His columns ranged from humor to human interest stories, and his alter ego, Aunt Gracie, commented on the idiosyncrasies of "Methane," a fictional Ohio town.

In 1988, The Columbus Dispatch broke ground at a new production plant that would be built on the west side near Georgesville Road. The plant would replace the mechanical facility attached to the back of the newspaper’s Downtown building. In this photo, Columbus Mayor Dana "Buck" Rinehart, flanked by officials from The Dispatch, addresses the audience at the groundbreaking for the facility.

In June 1995, Dispatch.com settled into the World Wide Web. Initially it was an electronic media kit of sorts, with photos, advertising rate books, links to other area sites and demographic information about Columbus and the paper’s readership. This screenshot of the website is from March 1997. How far we've come!

In 2005, The Dispatch became the first newspaper to launch a podcast. GameOn! is a video-game review show co-hosted by Chuck Nelson and Shawn Sines. It ran for more than 200 episodes over the next five years. The Dispatch still offers podcasts on Blue Jackets hockey, state politics and Ohio State football.?

In 2007, the Dispatch Kitchen opened at the North Market, where it was outfitted with a state-of-the-art kitchen studio for cooking segments on Channel 10. Dispatch food editor Robin Davis began taping the segments in 2007. The segments air on 10TV and are uploaded to DispatchKitchen.com.

In May 2011, Columbus dining magazine Crave was launched, along with ColumbusCrave.com.

In May 2007, a ticker was installed on the front and side of the Dispatch building at 34 S. Third St. to broadcast feeds of news headlines.

New Media, the holding company for GateHouse Media, bought The Columbus Dispatch for $47 million. The company funded the purchase with cash on the balance sheet and a $25 million loan. John F. Wolfe, chairman of The Dispatch Printing Company, said the sale protects the legacy his family built. The Dispatch was first published in 1871, and the Wolfe family had owned the paper since 1905. The sale included The Dispatch; ThisWeek Newspapers, a collection of 24 suburban weeklies; and seven magazines, including Columbus Monthly, Columbus CEO and Capital Style.