The Mercury News
daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, United States, since 1851
The Mercury News (formerly San Jose Mercury News; often locally known as The Merc) is a morning daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published by the Bay Area News Group, a subsidiary of Media News Group which in turn is controlled by Alden Global Capital, a vulture fund. In March 2013, it was the fifth largest daily newspaper in the United States, with a daily circulation of 611,194. In 2018, the paper had a circulation of 324,500 daily and 415,200 on Sundays. The Bay Area News Group no longer reports circulation, but rather "readership". As of 2021, readership of 312,700 adults daily was reported.
First published in 1851, the Mercury News is the last remaining English-language daily newspaper covering the Santa Clara Valley in Northern California. It became the Mercury News in 1983 after a series of mergers. During much of the 20th century, it was owned by Knight Ridder. Because of its location in Silicon Valley, the Mercury News has covered many of the key events in the history of information technology and computing, and was a pioneer in delivering news online.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Mercury News” as daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, United States, since 1851. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q575741. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2013, 2018, 2021 and 1851.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Mercury News” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.