About

In February 1916, Glover B. Garwood purchased the old Donalsonville Enterprise plant and began publication of the Donalsonville News. Garwood sold the paper to Ellison Dunn in 1926. Dunn modernized the newsroom technology by abandoning the hand typeset method and purchasing a linotype machine that was used by the paper into the 1970s. Dunn retired in July 1943 and sold the paper to Raymond Wheeler, who ran the Donalsonville News in the midst of World War II before selling it to E. C. ‘Billy’ Smith, Jr. in January 1945. Smith died in 1951 and Julian Webb took over publication of the paper. During this tenure, he was elected to the Georgia State Senate. Waldo ‘Bo’ McLeod purchased the paper from Webb in 1969. Known as the ‘Sage of Seminole County,’ McLeod had worked with the paper since the late 1940s. He served as a managing editor for both Smith and Webb before purchasing the paper. McLeod simultaneously wrote a column for the Atlanta Journal as ‘Piney Woods Pete.’ He published and edited the paper for the next forty years before selling it to the Ponder family in 2010. Dan Ponder, while serving as editor of the paper, was also elected mayor of Donalsonville. The Ponders, along with editor David Maxwell, oversaw a redesign of the paper and the establishment of the Donalsonville News website. The paper has since won two Georgia Press Association Community Service Awards and continues publication as the oldest business in Seminole county and the official organ of the county and the city of Donalsonville.