In May 1904, Hill sold the "Weekly Fairbanks News" to R. J. McChesney, who invested in a Linotype machine and a larger press. These improvements and the growing population of Fairbanks — by 1905, it had 2,500 residents — allowed the "Weekly Fairbanks News" to expand to semi-weekly, then daily publication, in the process becoming the "Fairbanks Daily News" on July 1, 1905. On September 3, the "News" had its first competition when the "Fairbanks Sunday Times" began publishing on the sole day that the "News" did not. Other papers soon arrived in the area. In 1906, the "Valdez News" reported, "With the newspaper plans already in Fairbanks and with those which are being shipped there this year, the Tanana metropolis will be well supplied. There are no less than five of them all told ..." In May 1906, McChesney sold the "Daily News" to Fairbanks' founder, Ebenezer Barnette. Later that month, an enormous fire destroyed the "Daily News" press and much of Fairbanks.