Our company traces its roots to the Utica Observer, a weekly founded by Eliasaph Dorchester in 1817. The Observer became a daily newspaper in 1848 and, after several mergers with other newspapers, became the Observer-Dispatch in 1922. That was also the year the paper was purchased by Frank E. Gannett, who founded the Gannett Company. Gannett owned the newspaper until 2007, when it was purchased by GateHouse Media, one of the largest publishers of locally based print and online media in the United States. For a while, we published two daily papers – the Daily Press in the morning and the Observer-Dispatch in the afternoon, and those newspapers were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 1959, for an investigation into local corruption. The two newspapers merged into a single, 7-day morning publication, the Observer-Dispatch, in 1987. Our company added digital delivery of news and information in January of 2000, when we launched uticaOD.com. In 2004, we acquired the Mid York Weekly newspaper, serving Hamilton, N.Y., and weekly Pennysaver publications, which are distributed throughout Oneida and Herkimer counties. We also publish Your Valley in Herkimer County.  The O-D is the main source of print and online news in the Mohawk Valley area of Upstate New York.