NewsBeat

22 NewsBeat December 2015 HUDSON — The Register-Star turned 230 this year, making it the second-oldest paper still in print in the nation. few months older than the Poughkeepsie Journal, the paper has gone through many incarnations since being founded as The Hudson Gazette on April 7, 1785 by Ashbel Stoddard and Charles Webster. The two newspapermen started their careers at the nation's oldest newspaper still in print, the Hartford Courant, then known as the Connecticut Courant. Stoddard, only in his early 20s, first established a book store and print shop on the corner of Third Street and Warren Street in Hudson. The duo got their daily news by sending a post rider to Litchfield, Connecticut, a major stop on the Post Road from Boston to New York City. Three times a week, news also came to them by sloop or stagecoach from Albany and New York City. The newspaper was printed weekly and a subscription cost 12 shillings — or about $3 per year. A fire, reported in The Gazette as the city's first major conflagration, destroyed the newspaper's offices, leading to the creation of Hudson's first fire outfit. Hudson residents rallied to raise funds for the paper, which continued publication without interruption, but the introduction of local papers The Balance, The Bee and The Wasp led to a fall in subscriptions. The Gazette was purchased by Ezra Sampson and Harry Croswell, of The Balance, in 1803, who merged the two papers and discontinued publication of The Gazette. Stoddard wrote an obituary for his creation in The Bee, which read, "DIED. In this city, on Tuesday last, Miss Hudson Gazette, daughter of Mr. Ashbel Stoddard, in her 19th year of age." He needled a rival start-up in the obituary, saying many of the paper's ìformer admirers" jumped ship "to the wheedling strumpet of the name Balance." The paper was revived in 1824 when a group of civic-minded citizens, including Hudson's then-mayor, raised $500 to purchase the Gazette's old equipment and launch a paper supporting the policies of the Democratic Party. M. Parker Williams, the owner of the Gazette beginning in 1861, moved the offices to the corner of Fourth Street and Warren Street, where the paper was produced until moving to the corner of Green and State streets in 2012. He founded the Hudson Daily Register in 1866, an evening newspaper also supporting the Democratic Party. In 1952, The Register bought another local paper, The Star, and the two merged their names to create the current name for the paper. New, larger presses were built in 1985 in Hudson, but were shut down and printing was moved to Catskill in 1997 when The Register-Star was bought by the Johnson Newspaper Corporation, which already owned the Catskill paper. Mark Vinciguerra, the Register-Star's current publisher, said the paper has expanded in recent years, developing into a multi-platform news provider. "The way we tell stories is new," Vinciguerra said, ìYou've got the ability to use a little bit of everything to tell the story… it' s not the same old one dimensional product." Vinciguerra, who formerly worked as the audience development director for the Albany Times-Union, said circulation has risen and social media engagement has skyrocketed in the last two years, so now more then 20,000 people follow the paper on social media. He said his vision of the Register-Star is modeled after town squares in ancient Greece. "The [townspeople] would go to the town square and gather and pass around the news of the day… I want to be that place," Vinciguerra said. — Reprinted from The Register-Star By ROGER HANNIGAN GILSON A Hudson Register-Star celebrating 230 years in print The history of the Register-Star newspaper

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