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Parkersburg News and Sentinel

The Parkersburg News and Sentinel serves Parkersburg and surrounding areas seven days a week.

The first Parkersburg News began publication before the Civil War. An early editor and proprietor, Charles Rhoads, was known as a secessionist and described by a Wheeling newspaper as a ‘‘disunionist.’’ In May 1861, the office of the News was destroyed by a crowd of pro-Union men, and Rhoads was driven out of town. It was 36 years before a paper of the same name, with different ownership, began publication in February 1897. The new Parkersburg News was a morning paper.

In 1915, Wheeling publisher Herschel C. Ogden, an ancestor of the present owners of Ogden Newspapers, became the owner of the Parkersburg News. The purchase was among the first steps in establishing the now extensive Ogden newspaper chain.

Meanwhile, Ogden’s company had acquired a rival newspaper, the Parkersburg Daily Sentinel, in 1912. The Sentinel was founded as the Parkersburg Weekly Sentinel by Robert Hornor in 1875. In 1899, Hornor’s son, also named Robert, began the Parkersburg Daily Sentinel. The weekly edition continued, becoming a semi-weekly in the 1890s until it ceased publication in 1920. The Daily Sentinel was established as a voice of the Democratic Party and as competition for the Republican-oriented Daily State Journal.

The morning Parkersburg News, published seven days a week, had a weekday circulation of 20,700 in 2004. The circulation of the evening Parkersburg Sentinel, published Monday through Friday, was 5,414. The newspapers merged into the Parkersburg News and Sentinel on April 5, 2009. In 2016, the newspaper’s daily circulation was 19,517 but reported an increase of more than 25,000 by 2023.