Part 1 - Anniversary of an Institution
The Story of the Transcript – Part 2 of 3: City and Newspaper, Growing Together
The West family had taken Golden from its founding in the gold rush era into the atomic age. They wrote about new industries, new businesses, and new schools. They reported when women got the vote, when Prohibition went into effect and then when it ended. They covered the Great Depression and both World Wars. They wrote about club meetings and church meetings, birth and death notices and wedding announcements. In short, they left a wonderful record of Golden’s first century.
After Fleet Parsons’ death in 1959, the Transcript was sold. Subsequent owners made a few changes. In 1966, it became bi-weekly (Mondays and Thursdays) and in 1968 it was issued tri-weekly (Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday). In 1969 the owners went to five days a week, Monday through Friday. At this point, the name changed to the Golden Daily Transcript.
That transition wasn’t entirely successful. The owners at that time wanted to expand the paper’s role beyond local news. They included many stories from the wire services and covered national and international news. They added a comics section and a TV guide. There were fewer and fewer articles about local people, companies, schools, and events.
Readers soon let them know that they expected their local paper to cover local news, and the Transcript slowly regained its local focus. It went from five days a week back to two, then returned to the original weekly schedule. It cycled through a few different names in this era, going from the Golden Daily Transcript to the Daily Transcript, even reverting to the Colorado Transcript for several years. In 1983, they settled on the Golden Transcript name that they retain to this day.
In 1966, after nearly a century at 1115 Washington Avenue (map), the new owners built a new home, located at 1000 10th Street (map), across from City Hall. The new building was much larger and enabled them to install new printing presses.
With the new equipment, they were able to offer printing services to 40-60 other newspapers. The 100th anniversary edition of the Transcript was printed on December 19, 1966–exactly 100 years after the first edition. That was the first edition of the paper printed on the new presses.
They completed their move from the old home to the new in January of 1967. And so the Transcript and the City of Golden began their second century together.
