The
Record traces its history back to the founding of the
Daily News, first published on February 9, 1878, by former Methodist preacher Peter Moyer at a printing press located at King and Ontario streets in Berlin (now Kitchener). This would be the city's first daily newspaper, and Canada's first bilingual daily as it was supplemented with a full page of German news for the first eight months of its life. In 1896, at the time of Moyer's death, three newspapers existed in the city of Berlin: the
Berlin Daily Telegraph, the
Berlin Daily Record and Moyer's
Daily News. Due to financial pressures, by 1897 the latter two had merged to become the
Berlin News Record, run by William (Ben) Uttley, publisher of the
Berlin Daily Record and local historian. Retiring in October 1919, Uttley sold the newspaper to W.J. Motz and
William Daum Euler, who renamed it
The Kitchener Daily Record. In 1922, the
Daily Record took over the
Daily Telegraph, leaving it the only newspaper of significant size serving the community. On April 2, 1929, the newspaper moved from 49 King Street West to what was at the time considered the most modern printing operation in the country (using a 24-page press) at 30 Queen Street North. Motz and Euler fought over control of the newspaper for the next two decades, with the former eventually winning majority interest. Euler sold his stock to
Southam Company in 1953, leaving Motz's son, John E. Motz, the sole director of the rapidly growing daily. On January 1, 1948, John Motz changed the name of the newspaper once again, to
The Kitchener-Waterloo Record (to mark the occasion of Waterloo's designation as a city), a name which remained until the change to
The Record, in 1994. During this period the 24-page press would be replaced first by a 48-page press in the 1950s, a 96-page press in 1961–1962, and a 128-page press in 1973. In 1962, it was the first company in Canada to use plastic sleeves to protect newspapers bound for rural addresses. Ownership had been in the hands of the Motz family for generations until 1990, when the paper was sold to Southam in a $90 million deal.
Conrad Black's
Hollinger Inc. took a controlling interest in Southam during the period when it owned
The Record. The paper was acquired by
Sun Media in 1998, but Sun itself was bought by
Quebecor soon after, and
The Record was sold to
Torstar before the end of the year. The administrative records and photographic negatives of the paper amassed prior to the Sun Media acquisition are maintained at the
University of Waterloo Library. On June 3, 2002,
The Record switched from being an afternoon newspaper to morning one. In January 2005, the paper was moved to Market Square on King Street East in Kitchener's downtown core. It had been based on Fairway Road in Kitchener since May 1973. The paper was printed at that location on a
letterpress system until 2000, when printing was moved to
offset presses at parent company Torstar's
Vaughan Press Centre in
Vaughan. Printing later moved to presses of sister papers in
Hamilton and
Guelph, and then back to Vaughan from time to time. As of 2014, the Record is usually printed at the Star-owned
Hamilton Spectator. On May 24, 2019, Torstar Corporation announced it will close its Hamilton Spectator printing operations on or about August 24, 2019. The printing work (including printing of the Record) performed at the Hamilton facility will be transferred to
TC Transcontinental Printing, various Torstar-owned facilities, and other external printers. The Record building on Fairway Road in Kitchener was demolished in September 2005. On March 11, 2008, the name was changed to the
Waterloo Region Record, returning the community name to the
nameplate. In early 2018, the company announced that it would set up a paywall on its website. Consumers who do not pay the fee to subscribe will be allowed to read only seven articles per month. An article published by
CBC News indicated that this strategy has not been successful for some newspapers. The
New York Times has a million subscribers but the publication has an international cachet that makes it a "must-read", especially in the U.S. where
Fake news has been widespread. == Circulation ==