The Concordia Blade-Empire is a local newspaper for

Concordia, Kansas Concordia is a city in and the county seat of Cloud County, Kansas, United States. It is located along the Republican River in the Smoky Hills region of the Great Plains in North Central Kansas. As of the 2020 census, the population of th ...

. It is the official newspaper for

Cloud County, Kansas Cloud County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kansas. Its county seat and most populous city is Concordia. As of the 2020 census, the county population was 9,032. The county was named after William Cloud, an officer in the America ...

. The paper publishes five days a week, Monday through Friday.

History

The ''Concordia Blade-Empire'' has a rich history of newspaper publication in the county. The paper today has its roots in two separate newspapers. (Several sources, including Janet Pease Emerey's book on the history of Concordia claim a third newspaper, ''The Republican'', merged and/or was purchased by ''The Republican Valley Empire'').

The Republican Valley Empire

The Concordia Blade-Empire was first published in Clyde as ''The Republican Valley Empire'' and was the first newspaper published in the county. The first edition was published on May 31, 1870. During its first year of publication, newspaper owner/publisher Henry Buckingham decided to move the newspaper operations to Concordia and printed its first edition in Concordia on December 24, 1870.

The Blade

James Manney Hagaman started a newspaper in 1879 and named the publication ''The Kansas Blade''. Hagaman's paper released its first edition on April 23, 1879.

The two papers merge

On May 29, 1920, the ''Empire'' and the ''Blade'' merged. Two papers were now printed by one publisher: a weekly edition named the ''Empire'' and the ''Daily Blade''. This continued until May 9, 1919, when an agreement was struck with a competitive newspaper that printed the ''Daily Kansan'' and the weekly ''Kansan''. The Publishers of the ''Kansan'' would only publish weekly while the ''Blade'' would publish daily. On June 2 of that same year, the paper was renamed ''The Concordia Blade-Empire''.

References

Newspapers published in Kansas Cloud County, Kansas {{Kansas-newspaper-stub