About

J. B. Derby and Company published the first issue of the Atlanta Sunday Gazette on October 6, 1878. Henry W. Grady, whose ‘New South’ editorials garnered national attention, was both editor-in-chief and shareholder of the Gazette. Although the paper did feature news and political commentary (most of which from Grady’s pen), it was principally a literary sheet. Subscribers who paid the two dollar subscription fee could expect to find short stories, sketches, local affairs, poetry, and other miscellaneous reading matters in the paper’s eight-pages. An advertisement for the newspaper, an example of which was published in the Free Press (Cartersville) on March 6, 1879, boasted several popular southern writers as contributors: ‘[It] has the brightest and best contributors in Georgia. Messrs. H. W. Grady, Joel C. Harris, A. Smith Clayon, contribute sketches, and Miss Bertha E. Peck, Miss Estelle Leyden, and Miss [J. J.] Hussey contribute stories.’ James R. Randall, another famous Southern journalist also wrote for the paper. Despite its high-profile contributors, the Gazette faced management turnover trouble in 1880. Grady took a position at the Atlanta Constitution and sold his shares of the Gazette to Colonel John H. Martin, former editor at the Columbus Enquirer, in February 1880. Derby also disposed of his shares, which meant the newspaper lost its two largest shareholders in the same month. By May 1880, Martin was sole editor and proprietor of the Gazette, a paper which began under a stock company. By March 1881, Charles Howard Williams, another Columbus, Georgia newspaper man, was publisher and M. M. Brannan assisted him in the editorial department. By 1883, after several changes in ownership, the Gazette ceased publication.