Its circulation area overlaps those of the Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle and The Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro, two other independent Gannett papers.

On March 3, 1933, the newspaper was placed under federal receivership, and Ashland City attorney and former Tennessean editorial writer Littleton J. Pardue was appointed to direct the paper.

Still suffering from effects of the Great Depression, the paper was sold at auction in 1937, when it was purchased for $850,000 by Silliman Evans, Sr. a former reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Evans came to an agreement with Nashville Banner publisher James Stahlman to move both newspapers into new offices at 1100 Broadway.

The two papers operated out of the same building and shared advertising and production staff, but maintained separate (and distinct) ownership and editorial voices.

After his father died unexpectedly of a heart attack on June 26, the board of the paper elected him publisher, and he became president of the Newspaper Printing Corporation in August.

In 1957, Tennessean cartoonist Tom Little won a Pulitzer Prize for his cartoon, "Wonder Why My Parents Didn't Give Me Salk Shots?

Ownership of the newspaper passed to his mother, and several months later his brother Amon Carter Evans was named Chief Executive of the paper.

In 1979, Gannett sold the Banner to a group of local investors including political figure John Jay Hooker, businessman Brownlee Currey and Franklin banker Irby Simpkins for about $25 million.

[3] In 1976, when it was revealed that Tennessean reporter Jacqueline Srouji had for many years been working as an informant (and possibly agent provocateur) for the FBI, including spying on her colleagues at the paper, Seigenthaler fired her immediately.

Srouji claimed that when she had started as a reporter for the Nashville Banner over a decade before, that paper's publisher had encouraged her to hand over information to the FBI.

Among the notable journalists who have worked for The Tennessean are Vice President Al Gore and his wife Tipper, Pulitzer Prize winning author David Halberstam, and cartoonist Anthony Wright.

In 2004 Gannett announced the acquisition of the Franklin Review-Appeal, and The Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro from Morris Multimedia.

He began his journalism career as a reporter at the paper in the 1960s and returned as editor after a serving in several leadership positions at other newspapers.