The Blade (Toledo, Ohio)

The first issue of what was then the Toledo Blade was printed on December 19, 1835. It has been published daily since 1848 and is the oldest continuously run business in Toledo.^[4]


David Ross Locke gained national fame for the paper during the Civil War era by writing under the pen name Petroleum V. Nasby. Under this name, he wrote satires ranging on topics from slavery, to the Civil War, to temperance. President Abraham Lincoln was fond of the Nasby satires and sometimes quoted them. In 1867 Locke bought the Toledo Blade.


The paper dropped "Toledo" from its masthead in 1960.^[4]


In 2004 The Blade won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting with a series of stories entitled "Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths".^[5] The story brought to light the story of the Tiger Force, a Vietnam fighting force that brutalized the local population. In 2006, The Blade was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and winner of the National Headliner Award, for breaking the scandal in Ohio known as Coingate.


As of 2015, the editor in chief is John Robinson Block.^[6] His family purchased the paper in 1926. They also own the media conglomerate Block Communications, which owns cable systems, television stations, and the Internet service provider Buckeye Express.


As of 2008 The Blade had the 83rd largest daily newspaper circulation in the United States.^[1]


The Toledo Blade was named for the famed swordsmithing industry of the original city of Toledo, Spain. Its motto, on the nameplate below the title, is "One of America's Great Newspapers."