Nashville Banner
The Nashville Banner is a defunct daily newspaper of Nashville, Tennessee, United States, which published from April 10, 1876 until February 20, 1998. The Banner was published each Monday through Friday afternoon (as well as Saturdays until the 1990s and Sundays until 1937), and at one time carried as many as five editions.
Type
Evening Newspaper (Monday–Friday)
Irby C. Simpkins, Jr.
Brownlee O. Currey
Irby C. Simpkins, Jr.
Eddie Jones
Tonnya Kennedy
April 10, 1876
English
February 20, 1998
1100 Broadway, Nashville, Tennessee 37203
40,633 (1998)
It was long a voice of conservative viewpoints in contrast to its liberal morning counterpart, The Tennessean, although these views were greatly moderated in the paper's twilight years.
Closing[edit]
The end occurred when the Gannett Co. made the publishers of the Banner a large offer to terminate the joint operating agreement. The offer was approximately $65 million,[5] likely more than any profit that could have been made by the continued publication of the Banner, so it ceased to exist. (This was not considered by the Justice Department to be an antitrust violation, but when Gannett attempted to do the same thing with its Honolulu Advertiser and the evening paper in that joint operating agreement, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, only a few months later, it was prosecuted as such, the merger was forestalled, and both papers continued to operate until 2010.)
The Banner's final edition was published on Friday, February 20, 1998.[1] The announcement to close was made public the previous Monday, February 16. Several of the Banner's popular features and reporters, including columnists Mary Hance ("Ms. Cheap") and Joe Biddle (sports), immediately went to The Tennessean.
Archives[edit]
The archives of the Nashville Banner were donated to the Nashville Public Library. The collection features the entire archive, a vending machine with the final edition still displayed in the window, the many awards the paper won over the years, various trinkets from the paper's offices, and a bronze statue of a paperboy selling the Banner which was originally placed on the plaza in front of the Tennessean/Banner offices. The archive is located at the downtown Nashville Public Library on Church Street and is open to the public.