The newspaper traces its roots to "The Press", which began publishing in 1878, and "The Daily Enterprise", which started publishing in 1885. The two papers were merged into one company in 1931, but the company did not begin publishing a daily morning paper named "The Press-Enterprise" until 1983. A. H. Belo acquired the company in 1998. In October 2013, A.H. Belo announced that it had reached an agreement to sell The Press-Enterprise's assets to Freedom Communications, parent company of the "Orange County Register", for $27 million; after some delays, the transaction closed in late November. Freedom declared bankruptcy in 2016, the "Register" and the "Press-Enterprise" were sold in a bankruptcy auction to Digital First Media in March 2016.