It isn’t often that any organization can celebrate its 120th birthday, and the Dayton Daily News is using our anniversary year to honor our past and celebrate our future.

On this day in 1898, James Middleton Cox bought the Dayton Evening News at age 28. Soon after, he changed the name to the Dayton Daily News and created the foundation for a media company that has been part of this region ever since.

Cox was a schooltea c her before buying the paper, and to honor that tradition we’re going to partner with local schools this year to use our operation as a laboratory for

their students to learn about civic engagement and the role of the media in our democracy.

There will be a special event that will give our subscribers the opportunity to meet and speak with our entire newsroom. This Sunday, we will publish a special section recount- ing our history and looking at how we covered key moments.

Our business team is reaching out to local businesses that have also shared our journey. If you are a business that has operated for a century or more in our region, please contact Business Editor Rich Gillette.

And all year, we’ll be republishing historic front pages on our websites, looking into how our newspaper and our community grew and changed over the past 120 years.

This region and this newspaper have shaped each other for more than a century, and we look forward to working together to face — and to cover — the challenges ahead.