Alabama's oldest newspaper, the Mobile Press-Register has had many name changes over its long history and is often just called the Register. Throughout its history, the paper has been home to reporters, editors, and owners who were important leaders in journalism, education, arts, and politics in Alabama and the nation. Profound changes in the newspaper publishing industry that have taken place during the early twenty-first century may threaten the Mobile Press-Register’s existence as a traditional newspaper, however.

Jonathan Battelle and John W. Townsend started the Mobile Commercial Register in 1821. The following year, the two men purchased the Gazette. In 1828 Thaddeus Sanford bought the Register and greatly improved the paper and expanded its influence. Sanford is often overlooked by historians, but his many financial investments made him a leader in Alabama business and society. He also became a leader in the Democratic Party at a time when editors served as the chief party spokesmen and newspaper offices often served as party headquarters. Sanford used his newspaper to voice his support of slavery but opposition to secession.


In 1882, Rapier hired Erwin B. Craighead to direct the expanding news coverage of the Register. Within a few years, Craighead became the vice president of the paper and also took over as chief editorial writer. For the next 28 years, many Mobilians thought of Craighead as the voice of the newspaper. Craighead championed a number of reforms, many of them lead by his wife Lura, that included the placement of delinquent teens in a detention home instead of jail. On the issue of race, Craighead's views reflected white paternalism toward African Americans.

Frederick I. Thompson, an Alabama media baron, bought the Register in 1910. Within a few years, he also acquired the Mobile Item and the Alabama Journal in Montgomery. With former Gov. Braxton Bragg Comer and his brother Donald Comer, Thompson bought the Birmingham Age-Herald. He also bought the Tri-Cities Daily, which covered Florence, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia, and owned stock in newspapers and magazines outside Alabama. Under Thompson, the Register pushed for railroad regulations, publicly owned docks at the port of Mobile, and an end to convict leasing.

By the late 1980s, the Press-Register's news coverage and its equipment needed updating. The Newhouse newspaper group hired Howard Bronson as publisher in 1992 and placed him in charge of revitalizing the paper. Bronson added more editors, reporters, and other staff, who improved the quality of the paper's news gathering and writing. A series of editorials advocating reform of the Alabama Constitution earned the paper a place as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1995. In 2002, after more than a half century on Government Street, the Press-Register moved into a new headquarters on Water Street.
But improved local news coverage could not turn around the financial drag on the newspaper’s operations. Producing a printed paper carried heavy costs: The Press-Register had to maintain expensive presses, a warehouse full of newsprint and fleets of delivery trucks. Even more important, advertising revenue dropped sharply after 2000. Readers fled as well. Between 2007 and 2012, the Press-Register’s circulation dropped 18 percent, down to 82,000. The story was much the same for Alabama’s other Newhouse newspapers, the Birmingham News and the Huntsville Times.

This change marked the end of the Press-Register’s 180 years of daily publication. With the Birmingham and Huntsville newspapers also cutting back, the focus on digital news left the Montgomery Advertiser as Alabama’s largest daily newspaper.
Additional Resources
Burnett, Lonnie A. The Pen Makes a Good Sword: John Forsyth of the Mobile Register. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006.
Additional Resources
Burnett, Lonnie A. The Pen Makes a Good Sword: John Forsyth of the Mobile Register. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006.
Logan, Andy. The Man Who Robbed the Robber Barons: The Story of William D'Alton Mann: War Hero, Profiteer, Inventor, and Blackmailer Extraordinary. New York: W. W. Norton, 1965.
Meeker, Richard H. Newspaperman: S. I. Newhouse and the Business of News. New Haven, Conn.: Ticknor & Fields, 1983.
Meeker, Richard H. Newspaperman: S. I. Newhouse and the Business of News. New Haven, Conn.: Ticknor & Fields, 1983.
Poore, Ralph. "Alabama’s Enterprising Newspaper The Mobile Press-Register and Its Forebears, 1813-1991." unpublished manuscript, 1992. Mobile Public Library, Mobile, Alabama.