It was established on March 27, 1871 Established in 1873, the Los Angeles Herald or the Evening Herald represented the largely Democratic views of the city and focused primarily on issues local to Los Angeles and Southern California.

The Los Angeles Daily Herald was first published on October 2, 1873, by Charles A. Storke.

It was the first newspaper in Southern California to use the innovative steam press; the newspaper's offices at 125 South Broadway were popular with the public because large windows on the ground floor allowed passersby to see the presses in motion.

The afternoon Herald-Express and the morning Examiner, both of which had been publishing in the same downtown Los Angeles building[2] since the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, merged in 1962.

A Los Angeles historian wrote in 2010, “A 1962 merger [of the Examiner] with the Los Angeles Herald-Express, Hearst's afternoon paper, was merely a formality, as the two papers had shared workspace for decades.”[3] For a few years after the merger, the Herald Examiner claimed the largest afternoon-newspaper circulation in the country.