Early years Founded in 1889 in
Oklahoma City by
Sam Small,
The Daily Oklahoman was taken over in 1903 by The Oklahoma Publishing Company (OPUBCO), controlled by
Edward K. Gaylord, also known as E. K. Gaylord. In 1916, OPUBCO purchased the failing
Oklahoma Times and operated it as an evening newspaper for the next 68 years. In 1928, E. K. Gaylord bought Oklahoma's first radio station,
WKY. More than 20 years later, he signed on Oklahoma's first television station, WKY-TV (now
KFOR-TV). The two stations would be the anchors of a broadcasting empire that, at its height, included six television stations and five radio stations. Nearly all of the Gaylord broadcasting interests would be sold off by 1996, though
The Oklahoman held onto WKY radio until 2002. E. K. Gaylord died at the age of 101, having controlled the newspaper for the previous 71 years. Management of the newspaper passed to his son,
Edward L. Gaylord, who managed the newspaper from 1974 to 2003.
Christy Gaylord Everest, daughter of Edward L. Gaylord and granddaughter of E. K. Gaylord, was the company's chairwoman and CEO until 2011. Christy Everest was assisted by her sister Louise Gaylord Bennett until the sale of the company in 2011 to Philip Anschutz.
2000s to present In October 2003,
The Daily Oklahoman was renamed
The Oklahoman with OPUBCO and future owner GateHouse Media officially retaining the registered trademarks of
The Daily Oklahoman,
The Sunday Oklahoman, and
The Oklahoma City Times to this day. In November 2008,
The Oklahoman announced that it was reducing its circulation area to cover approximately the western two-thirds of the state, rather than statewide. This shift halted delivery in Tulsa, which reduced the paper's circulation by about 7,000 homes. In January 2009,
The Oklahoman and the
Tulsa World announced a content-sharing agreement in which each paper would carry some content created by the other; the papers also said they would "focus on reducing some areas of duplication, such as sending reporters from both
The Oklahoman and the
World to cover routine news events." In 2010,
The Oklahoman introduced the first iPad app for a newspaper/multimedia company of its size in the United States. In 2018, publisher Chris Reen was replaced by interim publisher Jim Hopson. Later that year, editor Kelly Dyer Fry was announced to replace Hopson as publisher. She retained her roles as editor and vice president of news. Dyer Fry retired in November 2020, and in 2021, Ray Rivera was named the new executive editor of
The Oklahoman. He also oversees Gannett's Sunbelt region, which encompasses some 42 daily and weekly newspapers in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. In March 2022,
The Oklahoman moved to a six-day printing schedule, eliminating its printed Saturday edition. ==Controversies==