The newspaper traces its history to the
Raleigh Register, the
Raleigh Herald, and the
Beckley Evening Post, which were among a dozen weekly and monthly publications published in and around Beckley as early as the 1880s. The
Raleigh Register developed into a modern daily newspaper and began seven-day publication on June 6, 1923. The
Evening Post began daily publication on February 12, 1924. On May 31, 1926 the
Herald and Evening Post combined as a morning daily newspaper known as the
Beckley Post-Herald. On June 1, 1928, the
Raleigh Register and
Beckley Post-Herald came under
common ownership, with the
Post-Herald publishing Monday-Friday mornings, the
Register publishing Monday-Friday afternoons, and with subscribers receiving a combined paper produced by the
Post-Herald staff on Saturday and the
Register staff on Sunday. Despite the common ownership, the
Register was generally a
Democratic newspaper, and the
Post-Herald a
Republican alternative. This arrangement continued until the sale of the newspapers to the owners of the
Charleston Daily Mail in 1977. Following this, the editorial independence of the two publications declined, and the
Register was slowly shut down. By 1981 the
Register was simply an afternoon reprint and update of the
Post-Herald, with a separate editorial page. On January 1, 1985 the two newspapers were completely combined under the current name. The newspaper changed hands three times in the 1990s, before being acquired by its current owners in 2000. Circulation has waned with the declining population of the area.
Beckley Newspapers, a division of
Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., publishes the
Register-Herald and two weekly newspapers, the
Fayette Tribune and the
Montgomery Herald. ==See also==