Piece of History: Marking the end of an era

For nearly a century, the Cedar Rapids Gazette was an evening fixture in homes across Eastern Iowa. By 1981, the pace of the news cycle and the way people consumed it had changed enough to demand an adjustment. As the final evening edition reflected "...the newspaper businesses, for years reporting on a rapidly changing world, while escaping major modification itself, has been in revolutionary times in the last decade."

Deadlines for evening editions (11:50 a.m. and 1:20 p.m. locally) left little time to cover late-breaking stories, and television dominated the after-dinner hours. Morning editions offered more timely sports coverage, longer shelf life for advertisers, and better alignment with readers’ daily routines.

Across the nation, newspapers were shifting to morning delivery to stay competitive. In Cedar Rapids, the Gazette had experimented with a Saturday morning edition since late 1976, but the full transition came on June 26, 1981. By the time the Gazette made the change, 27 other papers had switched since 1976.

At the time, the Gazette served 69,000 daily subscribers and 77,000 on Sundays. It wasn’t the city’s first morning paper, a distinction which belongs to the Daily Observer. However, it was the end of a 98-year tradition in Cedar Rapids news.

Tara Templeman is curator at The History Center. Comments: curator@historycenter.org