The paper was founded in July 1876 as the
Gainesville Times, by brothers E. M. and
William Wade Hampton, and was renamed as
The Gainesville Sun in February 1879. The paper was first printed on July 6, 1876. It went through a series of ownership and name changes in the 1880s and 1890s, first being consolidated with
Henry Hamilton McCreary's
Weekly Bee as the
Gainesville Sun and Bee, then as the
Gainesville Daily Sun, and finally back to
The Gainesville Sun. It was bought by W. M. Pepper Sr. in 1917 for $50,000 and was published by the Pepper family for three generations, until it was sold to the
Cowles Media Company in 1962. During the time it was owned by the Pepper family (specifically in 1922) an editor at the paper openly admitted his membership in the
Ku Klux Klan and praised the Klan in print. An editorial published in the paper following the
Rosewood massacre justified the actions of the whites, saying "Let it be understood now and forever that he, whether white or black, who brutally assaults an innocent and helpless woman, shall die the death of a dog." Conversely, the
Tampa Tribune of the time called it "a lasting blot on the people of
Levy county", clearly condemning rather than justifying the massacre. In 1971, it was sold to
The New York Times Company. In 2015, Halifax was acquired by
New Media Investment Group. An online edition was launched in 1995, initially called
SunOne, and later simply
GainesvilleSun.com. ==Awards==