''The Knickerbocker News'' (popularly known as ''The Knick'') of
Albany, New York
Albany ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of New York, also the seat and largest city of Albany County. Albany is on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about north of New York Ci ...
was a
daily newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sport ...
published from September 4, 1843, (when it was founded as ''The Albany Knickerbocker'') in the capital city of New York State until April 15, 1988, when it was merged into a co-owned publication.
The founder was Hugh J. Hastings, a young immigrant from
County Fermanagh
County Fermanagh ( ; ) is one of the thirty-two counties of Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the six counties of Northern Ireland.
The county covers an area of 1,691 km2 (653 sq mi) and has a population of 61,805 a ...
,
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
, who worked as a reporter for several local newspapers before striking out on his own as a publisher/editor in the newspaper-rich community. He gave his newspaper its name in recognition of the region's deep Dutch heritage. (Albany began as the Dutch settlement of
Beverwyck
Beverwijck ( ; ), often written using the pre-reform orthography Beverwyck, was a fur-trading community north of Fort Orange on the Hudson River in New Netherland that was renamed and developed as Albany, New York, after the English took contro ...
, then became
Fort Orange
Fort Orange ( nl, Fort Oranje) was the first permanent Dutch settlement in New Netherland; the present-day city of Albany, New York developed at this site. It was built in 1624 as a replacement for Fort Nassau, which had been built on nearb ...
after the British takeover, and eventually was renamed Albany after the English Duke of Albany.) Over the years, Hastings (who became politically influential before eventually selling his company and moving to
Monmouth, New Jersey
Freehold is a borough and the county seat of Monmouth County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.
, where he worked as a publisher until his death in a carriage accident) and his successor owners purchased and absorbed numerous competitors, and for decades the publication had the highest daily circulation in New York's Capital Region.
What came to be called ''The Knickerbocker News'' after it absorbed the competing ''Albany Evening News'' was sold to the
Gannett Corp.
Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.Hearst Corporation, the same year in which Hearst sold one of its two Rochester, NY, newspapers to Gannett, in effect giving each communications giant a virtual monopoly in the two respective upstate cities.
The evening newspaper's last editor was
Harry M. Rosenfeld
Hirsch Moritz "Harry" Rosenfeld (August 12, 1929July 16, 2021) was an American newspaper editor who was the editor in charge of local news at ''The Washington Post'' during the Richard Mattingly murder case and the Watergate scandal. He oversaw ...
, who had been hired from the editorial staff of ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
'' by the Hearst Corp. about a year earlier to be editor of that newspaper and its sister publication, the ''Albany Times Union''. William M. Dowd, a veteran writer and editor who had been the associate managing editor of Hearst's ''Baltimore News-American'' before moving to Albany in February 1977 to oversee ''The Knickerbocker News''' daily operations and wrote an award-winning column that contributed to the publication winning more than 100 journalism awards in its final decade, was its last managing editor. When ''The Knickerbocker News'' staff and resources were folded into the ''Times Union'', under corporate orders no layoffs were made, an unusual decision in an industry in which staffing reductions during mergers had become the norm to cut costs.
According to ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' in 1988, in the paper's circulation "heyday in the 1930s and 1940s" it "was known for aggressive reporting, strong political coverage and a readable style." It continued to be known for those characteristics as shown by its annual harvest of journalism awards until its final days of publication.
''The Knickerbocker News circulation peaked at about 71,000 in 1972-73, which made it the largest newspaper at that time in the Capital Region, but had fallen to about 28,000 by the late 1980s. That was a fate that overtook most afternoon newspapers in the United States as major changes in the manufacturing sector resulted in changes in readership cycles by people who had been mainstays of newspaper purchasing before they began working different shifts and sought morning publications.