Holyoke Transcript-Telegram

The Holyoke Transcript-Telegram, or T‑T, was an afternoon daily newspaper covering the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts, United States, and adjacent portions of Hampden County and Hampshire County.

Published as a daily since 1882, after four years of heavy losses the newspaper ceased publication in January 1993; at the time it was one of the longest running Massachusetts papers to fold, two decades longer than the Boston Post. Long owned by the Dwight family, the T-T's last owner was Newspapers of New England, which had been founded by the Dwights as a holding company for the T-T and other newspapers it had acquired.

With the departure of the T-T, Holyoke lost its only newspaper of record. Daily newspaper readers in the city turned to newspapers in nearby cities, which increased their coverage of Holyoke: the Union-News of Springfield, now called The Republican; and the Daily Hampshire Gazette of Northampton.

History

Abolitionist origins

Founded as the Hampden Freeman, the debut issue of Holyoke's first newspaper was printed by proprietor William L. Morgan on September 1, 1849, when the locale was still known as Ireland Depot. The first editor of the then-weekly paper, a young lawyer named William B. C. Pearsons, would go on to serve as the city's first mayor a quarter century later, and in his earliest editorials would describe the New City project of the Associates as the "infant giant of Western Massachusetts, destined to eclipse Lowell". Identified by its name, the paper was staunchly abolitionist, with its views explained with brevity in an editorial on March 23, 1850—

"To our Whig friends we offer our kindest wishes and zealous support, and we shall sustain, as well as we may, the principles of the great and national Whig party. We are opposed to the extension of slavery into the new territories, and we are as much opposed to the policy of certain leaders at the north who style themselves the Free Soil Party...As men, we extend the hand of friendship to our Democratic readers (and we have a very large number), and wish them all success in private and personal enterprises, but as partisans, we throw the gauntlet in their midst, and in our strength defy them."

On January 15, 1853, the paper would be rechristened the Holyoke Freeman with Azro B. F. Hildreth assuming the editorship. This name would prove short-lived and by January 7, 1854 following some period of intermittent publication, the paper was again renamed the Holyoke Weekly Mirror, changing hands under the proprietorship of Lilley & Pratt, and leaving its Whig allegiance, in favor of a stated non-partisanship.