Lufkin Daily News
Lufkin, Angelina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
THE FIRST NOTICE FOUND OF THE DAILY NEWSPAPER IN LUFKIN IS IN THE FEB. 14, 1907 NACOGDOCHES SENTINEL: “LUFKIN HAS AN AFTERNOON DAILY PAPER, THE NEWS. WHILE A COPY OF THE NEWSPAPER HAS NEVER REACHED THIS OFFICE, IT IS SAID TO BE A RIGHT NEWSY LITTLE SHEET.” CHARLES L. SCHLESS, OF CHICAGO, STARTED THE PAPER AND RAN IT ON HIS OWN FOR ITS FIRST TWO YEARS OF PRODUCTION BEFORE SELLING PART OF THE OWNERSHIP TO SHAREHOLDERS. THE PAPER WAS THEN SOLD TO GEORGE WATFORD IN 1913. THE NEWS WAS PUBLISHED TWICE WEEKLY UNTIL 1915 WHEN THEN-OWNERS WATFORD, BINION, AND KURTH PURCHASED A MERGENTHALER LINOTYPE MACHINE. THE NEW MACHINE SPED UP THE PRODUCTION PROCESS BY MECHANIZING TYPESETTING AND THE NEWSPAPER HAS PUBLISHED DAILY EVER SINCE. OWNERS OF THE LUFKIN DAILY NEWS HAVE PRIORITIZED A COMMITMENT TO INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY, WHICH HAS ALLOWED THE NEWS TO BREAK PUBLISHING RECORDS AND PLAY A SUPPORTING ROLE IN LOCAL INDUSTRY. ON JANUARY 14, 1940, THE NEWS PUBLISHED A RECORD-SETTING 288-PAGE EDITION TO MARK THE COMPLETION OF SOUTHLAND PAPER MILLS INC. IT WAS PRINTED ON THE MILL’S FIRST 1,445-POUND ROLL OF WHITE PAPER FROM THE FIRST RUN OF COMMERCIALLY PRODUCED SOUTHERN PINE NEWSPRINT IN THE WORLD. IN 1959, THE NEWS MOVED TO ITS CURRENT FACILITY THAT IS A SHORT WALK FROM ITS ORIGINAL LOCATION ON COTTON SQUARE. THE NEWS MADE ANOTHER FIRST FOR THE AREA WHEN IT COMPUTERIZED ITS PRODUCTION PROCESS IN 1974. THE LUFKIN DAILY NEWS RECEIVED THE PULITZER PRIZE IN JOURNALISM FOR COMMUNITY SERVICE IN 1977. FOR MORE THAN A HUNDRED YEARS, THE NEWS HAS PROVIDED RESIDENTS OF LUFKIN AND THE SURROUNDING AREA WITH NEWS OF LOCAL INTEREST AND HAS UPHELD ITS POSITION AS AN IMPORTANT RESOURCE TO THE COMMUNITY. 175 YEARS OF TEXAS INDEPENDENCE * 1836-2011
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
First noted in 1907 as a "right newsy little sheet," the Lufkin Daily News grew from a Chicago transplant's one-man venture into a daily paper that mechanized typesetting in 1915 with a Mergenthaler Linotype. In 1940 it printed a record 288-page edition on the first commercially produced southern-pine newsprint in the world, made at nearby Southland Paper Mills. The paper computerized in 1974 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service in 1977.
Why it matters
The News shows how a small-town paper could sit at the crossroads of local journalism and industrial innovation—and reach the highest honor in American reporting.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Lufkin Daily News was born in the confident dawn of the twentieth century, when even small Texas towns aspired to the mark of a real city: a daily paper of their own. Its first recorded notice, in a February 1907 issue of a neighboring town's paper, is charmingly offhand — Lufkin now had an afternoon daily called the News, said to be "a right newsy little sheet," though the rival editor admitted he had never actually seen a copy.
This was the Progressive era, a time of rapid mechanization, and the newspaper business was being remade by machines. For centuries type had been set by hand, letter by letter; the arrival of mechanical typesetting changed everything about how fast and how much a paper could print. A small-town publisher who could get his hands on that technology could punch far above his weight.
East Texas, meanwhile, was timber country, and the story of the News is inseparable from the pine forests and mills around it. The same region that produced lumber would, in time, produce paper — and a local newspaper sat at the meeting point of the two, its very pages tied to the industry outside its windows.
People & events
The paper was started by Charles L. Schless, a transplant from Chicago, who ran it single-handedly for its first two years before selling part of the ownership to shareholders. In 1913 it passed to George Watford. Two years later, in 1915, owners Watford, Binion, and Kurth made the decision that fixed the paper's course: they bought a Mergenthaler Linotype machine. By mechanizing typesetting it sped production so dramatically that the News, until then published twice weekly, has appeared daily ever since.
That appetite for new technology became the paper's signature. The most spectacular proof came on January 14, 1940, when the News published a staggering 288-page edition to celebrate the completion of Southland Paper Mills. It was printed on the mill's first 1,445-pound roll of white paper — from the first run of commercially produced southern pine newsprint in the world. A local paper, quite literally, printing itself on a local first.
The paper kept moving forward. In 1959 it relocated to its current home, a short walk from its original spot on Cotton Square, and in 1974 it became the first in the area to computerize its production. Three years later, in 1977, the Lufkin Daily News received journalism's highest honor, the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service.
Its place in the American story
The News captures a truth about American journalism: that the great story of the free press is not only told by big-city dailies but by thousands of local papers keeping watch over their own communities. When such a paper wins the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service — the profession's most revered category, awarded for journalism done on behalf of a community — it shows that the highest calling of the press can be answered anywhere, not just in the metropolis.
The paper also stands at a genuine national milestone. The 1940 edition marked the arrival of commercially produced newsprint made from fast-growing southern pine — a breakthrough that helped free American publishers from dependence on distant northern and imported paper, and that reshaped both the papermaking industry and the economy of the South.
And in its steady embrace of each new tool — the Linotype, then the computer — the News mirrors the whole arc of American printing, from hand-set type to mechanized lines to the digital age. Few small papers so neatly embody the technological march that carried journalism across the twentieth century.
If you visit
Lufkin invites you to think of its downtown as a working newsroom's neighborhood. The paper's present home sits only a short walk from its original location on what was known as Cotton Square, so you can trace, on foot, the short distance a century-old institution traveled while staying rooted in the same few blocks.
As you stand by the marker, let the numbers sink in: a single 288-page edition, printed on the first roll of a brand-new kind of paper. It is the sort of local boast that turns out to be a world first, and knowing it changes how you see the ordinary storefronts around you.
Make it part of a broader East Texas outing that takes in the region's timber and paper heritage. The forests, the mill history, and this newspaper are all one story, and reading the marker with that in mind lets a quiet downtown corner open up into more than a hundred years of ink, machinery, and community life.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Charles L. Schless
- · George Watford
Related events
- · Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, 1977
Themes & tags
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