The old boxing adage is that styles make fights. Styles also made Chattanooga newspapers an interesting study in contrasts for much of the 20th century.
In one corner, there was The Chattanooga Times, once owned by Adolph Ochs of New York Times fame and owned and operated by his heirs for most of the century. Founded in 1869, The Chattanooga Times was big picture and buttoned up. If you went to journalism school or studied journalism in college, the Times could have been the blueprint your professor had in mind when teaching about the profession.
In the other corner was the Chattanooga News-Free Press, owned and operated by Roy McDonald. If Ochs was the first godfather of Scenic City newspapers, McDonald was the second. The News-Free Press started as a weekly in the 1930s before becoming the city’s afternoon daily in 1936. The News-Free Press was hometown, locally focused. McDonald liked his paper to have plenty of pictures, and he wasn’t afraid to turn away a story if he felt it would violate the sensibilities of Chattanooga readers.
In a 1980 story on the two papers, The Washington Post described the Times this way: “Through the years, The Chattanooga Times maintained a philosophic-kinship with its more famous cousin (in New York) … It has been regarded as Democratic, liberal, intellectual, highbrow.”