[2] The paper is particularly notable for its Pulitzer Prize-winning picture of Baby Jessica McClure when she was rescued from her well in neighboring Midland, Texas.
The Weekly News lasted only one year, and was followed by six other short-lived weekly publications until August 1927, when production of Odessa Times and Odessa News began.
The towns of Penwell and Goldsmith supported, for a short time during oil boom of the 1930s, the only Ector County newspaper known to have been published outside Odessa.
On October 2, 1940, R. Henderson Shuffler consolidated the Daily Bulletin and the News-Times into the Odessa American, which he sold on Aug. 11, 1945.
Ownership of the newspaper changed twice before Aug. 13, 1948, when it was purchased by Raymond C. Hoiles of Freedom Newspapers, Inc. That company, which later became Freedom Communications, sold the Odessa American along with its other Texas properties to AIM Media Texas, LLC, on May 18, 2012.