The Citizen was formerly an afternoon paper called the
Laconia Evening Citizen and was launched by former Laconia mayor Edward J. Gallagher in 1926. It was owned by Gallagher's daughter, Alma Gallagher Smith, and her husband, Lawrence J. Smith, following Edward Gallagher's death in 1978. The Smiths operated the newspaper until the
Geo. J. Foster Company purchased the paper on May 10, 1991. The company was the publisher of ''
Foster's Daily Democrat'' in
Dover, New Hampshire. In the late 1990s, the Foster Company launched ''Foster's Sunday Citizen
as a joint venture by Foster's Daily Democrat
and The Citizen'', neither of which previously had a Sunday edition. In November 2006,
The Citizen converted to morning publication; ''Foster's Daily Democrat
followed a year later. The company made the change in order to compete with nearby papers such as the New Hampshire Union Leader and Concord Monitor''. On June 23, 2010, the Foster Company announced that it would sell the paper on June 26, in order to concentrate on their main property, the Dover-based publication. The company said it would continue to print
The Citizen and the Laconia edition of the
Sunday Citizen at its presses for at least the next three months. The new owner was Sample News Group of
Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, publisher of multiple daily and weekly newspapers across the northeastern United States, including
The Eagle Times of
Claremont, New Hampshire. Under Sample News Group,
The Citizen was managed by Eagle Printing & Publishing of Claremont. Sample News Group suspended publication of
The Citizen with its edition of September 30, 2016, citing rising costs in printing and production and inability to find a buyer for the newspaper. == Features ==