Starting June 27, 2023, the print edition of the Gazette-Times will be reduced to three days a week: Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
[4] As a result, pugnacious Democrat Asahel Bush, then serving as Territorial printer, moved his weekly Oregon Statesman from Salem to Corvallis to be close to legislative newsmakers.
Town founder Joseph C. Avery, himself a Democratic partisan, sought to fill the void with a new paper.
He purchased press, type, and supplies and hired a small staff to launch a new publication called the Occidental Messenger in 1857.
[5] Simpson immediately noted the change in an editorial, writing: Temperance ceases to be the speciality of this paper, as, in fact, it is not the forte of the present editor.....
Right here the bright habiliments of neutrality are laid aside forever, and wheeling into line the good champion of prohibition goes down in the smoke and fury of political war.
[5] In January 1876, the size of the Gazette was enlarged and in December of that same year the publication was made into a corporation, with editor William Carter one of the three incorporators.
[5] Carter's supremacy would end with his death in 1880, with fellow incorporator James A. Yantis taking over the operation of the publication until its eventual sale to M. S. Woodcock in May 1881.
During the 1880s the construction of the Oregon Pacific Railroad dominated local politics in Corvallis and surrounding Benton County.
Cole, was according to one account fired for refusing to obey instructions of the paper's owners to support a Democratic, pro-railroad candidate for state senator.
Wishing to explain to the community why he had been fired, Cole secured permission to publish an issue under the condition that the proofs first be submitted for approval by a railroad representative.
In 1888, a local businessman, Robert Johnson, who had previously worked as city editor of The Gazette, bought the Chronicle's printing press and assets at a sheriff's auction.
Claude Ingalls, who came to Corvallis from Washington, Kansas, bought out Springer's share in the paper in 1915.
[11] Lee Enterprises bought the newspaper on October 1, 1969,[12] and continues to operate it to the present day.