Published as a daily since 1882, after four years of heavy losses the newspaper ceased publication in January 1993; at the time it was one of the longest running Massachusetts papers to fold, two decades longer than the Boston Post.

Founded as the Hampden Freeman, the debut issue of Holyoke's first newspaper was printed by proprietor William L. Morgan on September 1, 1849, when the locale was still known as Ireland Depot.

We are opposed to the extension of slavery into the new territories, and we are as much opposed to the policy of certain leaders at the north who style themselves the Free Soil Party...As men, we extend the hand of friendship to our Democratic readers (and we have a very large number), and wish them all success in private and personal enterprises, but as partisans, we throw the gauntlet in their midst, and in our strength defy them.

This name would prove short-lived and by January 7, 1854 following some period of intermittent publication, the paper was again renamed the Holyoke Weekly Mirror, changing hands under the proprietorship of Lilley & Pratt, and leaving its Whig allegiance, in favor of a stated non-partisanship.

[6] In 1881, one William G. Dwight, having just graduated from Amherst College, joined the paper's staff; within a year's time he would assume the shares of Kirtland.

[8] By 1926 Dwight completed acquisition of the rival Holyoke Telegram daily, lending the combined newspaper the name it would keep until 1993.

Penalties of fine or imprisonment or revocation of the right to travel should not be imposed upon American newspaper or magazine writers, who, at their own risk, choose to pursue their profession in any country in the world with which this Nation is not a[t] war.

With the administration unwavering in its policy, Dwight would continue to work with his contemporaries at the Associated Press and other journalistic bodies to pressure the Secretary of State.

In a widely-quoted April 1957 speech he would go on to say "[a]rguments based on the evils of the Peiping [Beijing] Regime have been advanced to bolster the decision to keep us from finding out for ourselves what is taking place over there.

Though their success would be limited, and the Transcript-Telegram itself would not send journalists to China, Dwight's work would prove influential in the discontinuation of this policy.

[14][15] William Dwight, Jr., stayed on as publisher only until 1981, when the company board, made up largely of his family including brother-in-law George W. Wilson, fired him.

William Jr. later blamed his out-of-towner replacements for the newspaper's decline, according to CommonWealth magazine: The new crew had grand journalistic visions, and forgot the Transcript's local roots, residents say.

In a newspaper interview, the T-T's then-publisher blamed economics: "You're wrestling with a market that has decreased substantially over the last two decades", said Murray D. Schwartz, publisher of the Transcript-Telegram.

[20][21] Immediately after the daily newspaper's demise, Newspapers of New England reopened the T-T as a group of four free-circulation, tabloid-format weekly newspapers—a weekly Transcript-Telegram in Holyoke, and In South Hadley-Granby, In Chicopee and In Westfield, covering four of the largest cities and towns in the old daily T-T circulation area.