MARKING 150 YEARS AS DAILY NEWS SOURCE FOR SAN DIEGANS

One hundred and fifty years ago, Douglas Gunn and Edward “Ned” Bushyhead published the first daily edition of The San Diego Union newspaper on March 20, 1871.

The city of San Diego had a population of about 2,300. The new daily boasted of a subscriber list with nearly 400 members.

The first weekly Union had been published on Oct. 10, 1868. The production of the daily edition signaled a period of growth for both the newspaper and the town.

According to Al Jacoby’s unpublished history of the Union, there were only two other daily newspapers being printed in Southern California at that time, the News and the Star, both in Los Angeles.

Both L.A. papers have since ceased publication, leaving The San Diego Union-tribune as the oldest surviving daily newspaper line in the region.

Subscription rates, printed on the front page of the new daily in 1871 were $10 per year, $6 per half year and $3 per quarter.

(The Union-tribune is currently running a subscription offer for unlimited digital access priced at $4 for four months. Print subscriptions cost more.)

The first daily Union also carried advertisements for the real estate offices of Alonzo Horton’s Charles P. Taggart’s. Taggart, a lawyer, had purchased founding editor Jeff Gatewood’s share of The Union in 1869, but sold it a few months later.

In addition to telegraphic news reports from across the nation, the front page also carried a local writer’s opinion that, “Artificial

Stone,” a patented kind of cast concrete or composite stone, would be a superior building material for a growing San Diego.

“San Diego is at present in a transition state— a city, so to speak, in its swaddling clothes,” author W.R. Frisbic wrote. “The infant will soon expand rapidly, and must drop the regalia of babyhood for pants and boots.”

More news, including world news and shipping items and advertisements for dry goods, general merchandise and “C.J. Overshiner, Carriage and Wagon Manufactory,” ran inside the paper.

Page two carried this brief editorial, promising that The Daily Union was the enterprise that would grow with the city.

From The Daily Union, Monday, March 20, 1871:

GOOD MORNING!

The DAILY UNION greets the good people of San Diego.

A list of nearly four hundred city subscribers, obtained since our announcement of the daily on Thursday last, and the advertisements already handed in, show that our anticipations were not ill-founded, and encourage us in the belief that our enterprise will be sustained.

As we have heretofore stated, no effort will be spared on the part of the publishers to make the paper worthy of the best support of the community.

We submit the first number to the public with confidence that it will meet a favorable reception, and with the promise that it shall grow with the growth of the city, and shall be increased in size and made more complete in its several departments from time to time, as rapidly as the support extended to it will permit.