Growth and changes
During Bowles' lifetime, and subsequently, the Republican office was a sort of school for young journalists, especially in the matter of pungency and conciseness of style, one of his maxims being: "put it all in the first paragraph".[13]
In 1849, Bowles hired Josiah Gilbert Holland, a poet who had studied medicine and taught school in the American South. Soon, the assistant editor purchased an interest in the newspaper and wrote spiritual and advice columns.
Under the leadership of editor Bowles and assistant editor Holland, the Republican became the most widely-read and respected small town daily in America.
Bowles was an acquaintance of Emily Dickinson, and he published a handful of the very few poems that she printed in her lifetime, including "A narrow fellow in the grass" and "Safe in their alabaster chambers".
Bowles was succeeded as publisher and editor-in-chief of the Republican by his son Samuel Bowles (b. 1851).[13]
Charles Dow, founder of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, started his career as a business reporter for the Springfield Daily Republican as an apprentice to the newspaper's owner Samuel Bowles III.[14]
The Republican launched the careers of several prominent journalists and novelists. I. E. "Sy" Sanborn, longtime Chicago sportswriter and one of the original organizers of the Baseball Writers' Association of America in 1908, began his career at The Republican. Radio's "poet laureate" Norman Corwin was a reporter for The Republican in the 1930s.[15] Novelist Tom Wolfe was a reporter for The Springfield Union in the late 1950s.[16]
The title "Ms." was first suggested by an anonymous 1901 letter to The Republican. The letter read, in part, "To call a maiden Mrs. is only a shade worse than to insult a matron with the inferior title Miss. Yet it is not always easy to know the facts... The abbreviation 'Ms.' is simple, it is easy to write, and the person concerned can translate it properly according to the circumstances."[17]
In 1915, Samuel Bowles, who had been dead for nearly four decades, was compared to William Rockhill Nelson, publisher of The Kansas City Star, who died that year. "Of course, The Star was William R. Nelson even more than The Springfield Republican was Samuel Bowles," wrote the Chicago Post in a tribute.[18]
During the 1920s, Sherman Bowles, son of Samuel Bowles IV, constructed a modern printing plant at 32 Cypress Street in Springfield and launched the hostile takeover of three competitors. His newspaper monopoly controlled a combined circulation of 280,000. He died on March 3, 1952, of a heart attack at the age of 61.[19]
In 1960, Advance Publications, owned by the Newhouse family, purchased a 40 percent stock interest in the Republican Company, Inc., holder of The SpringfieId Union, The Springfield Sunday Republican and The Springfield Daily News. The Newark, New Jersey–based company had an agreement with the Bowles heirs to purchase their 45 percent stock holdings in the Springfield companies on Sept. 1, 1967. The purchase was opposed by the editors of the newspapers and a prolonged legal battle ensued.[20] An organization called the Springfield Newspapers became the local division of the Newhouse family empire with David Starr, a vice president for Advance, serving as publisher.[21]
The Springfield Daily News and the Morning Union merged operations in the 1970s, operating as separate papers, even endorsing different candidates for the same offices. The circulation for the Morning Union was reported at 128,041 on October 8, 1972.[22] The Springfield Daily News circulation stood at 92,342 on September 30, 1972.[23] Eventually the two newspapers were combined into The Union-News (a morning paper) in 1988, with The Sunday Republican published on Sundays.
Larry McDermott served as publisher for a decade beginning in 1999 and the newspaper reverted to its historical, pre-Union-News name of The Republican around 2003. At the start of McDermott's tenure, circulation for the Union-News was 90,555.[24] By September 2005, it had slipped by less than 5 percent to 86,359.[25] With McDermott's retirement in December 2009, George Arwady became publisher of The Republican. He was previously publisher of The Newark Star-Ledger, where he had threatened to shutter that newspaper amid financial crises.[26][27]
In 2019, the New England Newspaper Association awarded The Republican its Newspaper of the Year as a daily, and among Sunday newspapers, for its investigative reporting on the Springfield Police Department controversies earlier that year.[28]
Longtime editor and Yankee Quill winner Wayne E. Phaneuf retired in 2020 and was succeeded by Cynthia G. Simison and later Larry Parnass.[29][30]
As with many daily newspapers, The Republican has seen its advertising base erode and circulation shrink in recent years. Its reported daily circulation was down to 8,593 in September 2025, a tenth of where it stood one quarter of a century earlier. The newspaper marked its 200th anniversary on September 8, 2024.[31]
