UticaOD - Founded by Eliasaph Dorchester in 1817, the newspaper was originally named the Utica Observer. The paper under the Observer name continued through a number of mergers and was purchased in 1922 by Frank Gannett.

The same year another merger took place resulting in the seven-day, afternoon and Sunday Observer-Dispatch.

In 1929 the initial part of the current Observer-Dispatch plant was built and in 1935 the competing morning paper, the Utica Daily Press, was purchased by the Gannett company. The two papers published side by side for more than 50 years, garnering the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 1959. They were combined into the current seven-day morning Observer-Dispatch in 1987.

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