The Virginia Gazette

In 1743, Parks built a paper mill in Williamsburg; he purchased the raw material to create newsprint from Benjamin Franklin.

[2] On February 3, 1775, Alexander Purdie, previously a publisher of the original Gazette, started a third paper of the same name.

[3][4] In 1893 W. C. Johnston brought the name Virginia Gazette back to Williamsburg in newspaper form, but unrelated to its colonial predecessors.

As editor of the Virginia Gazette, a Democratic weekly, Johnston campaigned vigorously to attract industry to the region.

The Gazette, for example, described a new mill that opened in 1895 as "the morning star of the future that heralds a glorious dawn of prosperity upon this little city."

Typical content included local and national news, general interest stories, advertisements, business directories, college notes, and social happenings.

But thousands question the manner in which women are to be enfranchised and honestly believe that the surrender to the general government of the powers of the state is too big a price to pay for a privilege which is chimerical and visionary in the extreme."

Havilock Babcock, of the journalism faculty was editor and students served as reporters and handled all the other newspaper jobs, except printing.

Through the years, the paper won Virginia Press Association's award for community excellent in publishing three times, in 1969, 1980 and 1994.