The
Lancaster New Era was founded in 1877 with the goal of taking the state
Republican machine to task. In 1920,
New Era merged with another Republican newspaper,
The Examiner.
Paul Block Sr. bought the
New Era-Examiner three years later and positioned it to compete with the morning
Intelligencer and afternoon
New Journal, both published by the Steinmans. When the venture failed in 1928, Block sold the paper, now named
New Era, to the Steinmans, who merged the
Intell and
Journal into the morning
Intelligencer Journal and published
New Era as an afternoon newspaper on every day of the week except Sunday. The Saturday edition was eliminated in 2007 and associated content moved to the Saturday-morning edition of
Intell. By 2009,
New Era had the largest circulation of any Pennsylvania newspaper in the afternoon newspaper market. It won the
Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association Sweepstakes Award four years in a row. Its reporting on the
West Nickel Mines School shooting in eastern
Lancaster County won numerous state and national awards, among them the Pulliam National Journalism Writing Award and the Taylor Award for Fairness from the
Nieman Foundation for Journalism. On 26 June 2009, Lancaster Newspapers published the final afternoon edition of
New Era, citing increasing costs and decreasing readership, and merged it with the
Intelligencer Journal.
Columns,
comics and other
syndicated content previously reserved for the afternoon edition now appear in the
Journal. ==
The Sunday News ==