It was on June 17, 1976, that the first edition of the Independent Herald was published. 

Founded by Paul Roy, a veteran newsman who served as publisher and editor of the IH for most of his life, and remained publisher until his death in 2015, it was Scott County’s second newspaper. 

Roy was always a “newspaper boy.” As a child, he sold Grit newspapers door to door in his hometown. He later started a school newspaper while attending Oneida High School — though it lasted only one edition before being shut down by school administrators as an unauthorized publication. 

After serving in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War, Roy graduated journalism school at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, Tenn., and worked at two different newspapers in Cleveland, Tenn., before returning to his hometown to start the IH. He later said he decided to start a newspaper in Scott County after his shipmates in the Navy laughed at his hometown newspaper, joking that front page news “back home” was a new stoplight in Oneida. (“All these years later, and sometimes the biggest story is a new stoplight in town,” Roy said late in life.) 

Roy solicited investments from several well-respected businessmen in Oneida before starting the new paper. Among the original investors were Lay’s Oneida Furniture Co. manager Jack M. Lay, insurance agency owner Bill R. Duncan, and Big John’s Foodette owner “Big John” Litton. Oneida businessman Jan Jeffers, who would later establish Mrs. Winner’s Chicken & Biscuits, soon joined as an investor, as well. 

The newspaper was launched amid America’s bicentennial celebration, leading to its slogan, “Founded in America’s 200th Year, in the Spirit of ’76.” The newspaper’s parent company was named Liberty Press Inc.

Working 24-hours and 36-hours straight, along with many holidays and weekends, Roy and his wife, Debbie, churned out more than 2,000 consecutive issues of the Independent Herald without missing a single edition. Lay and Duncan remained owners of the IH for the entirety of their lives, as did Roy. Debbie Roy served as news editor throughout her husband’s ownership of the newspaper. There were several different people who worked in the sports department through the years, including David Terry, Tom Chitwood, LeEtta Boyatt, and Raymond Thompson. Multiple people served long tenures as the newspaper’s compositionists, the last of whom was Cora Hill Queener, a 30-plus-year employee of the newspaper. 

In 2000, Ben Garrett joined the newspaper as an outdoors columnist and high school sportswriter. He became the newspaper’s editor in 2004, as Roy relinquished the role he had held in 1976 to focus more on the business end of the newspaper as its publisher, while also focusing more time on history. 

Roy became one of Scott County’s most respected historians during his newspaper career, and played an indelible role in the revitalization of the Scott County Historical Society, to which he devoted thousands of hours of his time. In 2000, he donated the manuscript for his painstakingly-researched Civil War book, Scott County in the Civil War, to the Historical Society for publication. U.S. Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr. was so impressed with Roy’s work that he tried to talk him into taking on a full-time role as president of the Historical Society. Roy declined, choosing to continue focusing on his life’s work at the newspaper. 

Roy experienced tidal changes in technology through his nearly 40 years with the IH, from the old days of paste-up composition to the new era of pagination that arrived in the 1990s and was fully implemented by the IH in 2003. As a result, the IH transitioned from a physical cut-and-paste method of composition to digital composition of the weekly product that, instead of being delivered to the press by hand on paste-up sheets, was simply emailed. The IH contracted with several different presses through the years. In latter years, the newspaper was printed in Oak Ridge, Somerset (Ky.), London (Ky.), and Jackson (Ky.), before moving to Gannett’s state-of-the-art press at the Knoxville News Sentinel in 2016. The IH was the first newspaper in Scott County to print in full color on its front page and select other pages beginning in 2003 (after previously using “spot color” periodically), and with the move to Gannett in 2016 became the first newspaper in Scott County and one of only a few community weeklies in Tennessee to print in color on every page. 

In 2004, the Independent Herald launched its first website, www.ihoneida.com. The website initially published only three of the week’s top stories after the print publication hit newsstands. In 2011, the newspaper shifted to a web-first approach, publishing stories on its website throughout the week.

The IH won many awards through the years, especially for education reporting in the 1980s. In 2015, Roy’s work with the newspaper culminated with the IH winning the “General Excellence” award in the Tennessee Press Association/University of Tennessee Press Contest as the state’s best newspaper in its circulation class.

Roy was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2014 and stepped back from his full-time work at the newspaper. He would die in 2015 at his Huntsville home and was buried at the Mossop Cemetery in Huntsville. Debbie Roy continued ownership of the IH until 2018, when the newspaper was sold to Garrett. 

Meanwhile, the IH won “General Excellence” for the second time in three years in 2017. 

In 2021, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the IH made the difficult decision to end print publication after 45 years of newsprint. Advertising trends had shifted dramatically since the start of the Great Recession in late 2007, as Americans gradually moved towards digital consumption of news and information. In the aftermath of the recession, from 2011 to 2015, circular advertising sustained print operations at many community weeklies across the country, including the IH. However, major retailers with national name recognition changed their marketing strategy around 2015, further shifting advertising trends. Later, the Covid-19 pandemic forced many small businesses that remained loyal newspaper advertisers to temporarily close their doors. Some did not reopen, and all saw their operating budgets take a major hit. Meanwhile, the pandemic further shifted the trend towards online consumption of news and information. The Independent Herald opted for viability and sustainability by shifting to a digital-only format. Other major newspapers in Tennessee have since made similar decisions, such as the Chattanooga Times Free Press. 

The IH has not ruled out a return to print if conditions — including Americans’ appetite for “old-fashioned” mediums — lend themselves to viability of a printed product, and is actively exploring the possibility of a monthly or quarterly magazine that would serve as a digest of news and information related to Scott County and its people. 

Simultaneous to the move to digital publication, the Independent Herald launched the IH Sports Network to provide livestreaming broadcasts of Oneida High School and Scott High School sporting events. Tim Smith and Rick Keeton, veteran play-by-play broadcasters for the respective schools dating back to the late 1980s, joined the IHSN, as did Greg Bond, technology director at the Scott County School System. The IHSN partnered with Bond’s company, South Fork Networks, to provide streaming setups and related services. Since 2021, hundreds of local sporting events broadcast by the IHSN have been simulcast on local access cable TV (Highland Media’s channels 190 and 191) and radio (WBNT 105.5 FM). The IHSN is widely regarded as one of the best high school sports media outlets in Tennessee, and has also worked with WECO (101.3 FM) in Wartburg to provide live video for select postseason sporting events. 

The IH also provides live broadcasts of the Scott County Fairest of the Fair pageants, the Scott County Chamber of Commerce Christmas parade, and the Town of Huntsville’s Firemen’s Fourth parade and fireworks, along with other community events. In 2022, the IH provided live coverage of election results in the Scott County General Election, which remains its top-rated video broadcast to date.

In 2025, the Independent Herald shifted its publication focus to weekly newsletters, offering a different newsletter each day of the week through the Substack publishing platform. In June 2026, the IH shifted back to daily news publishing through a stand-alone website, while also continuing its commitment to daily delivery of newsletter content to email subscribers. Subscriptions to the IH have been free since the shift to digital publication in 2021, as the IH remains an advertiser-supported publication that is committed to not placing content behind paywalls. Today, the Independent Herald publishes at www.independentherald.net, while the newspaper’s original domain name, www.ihoneida.com, is used for the Encyclopedia of Scott County, a separate publication started by Liberty Press Inc. as part of the move to digital in 2021. The IH’s newsletters are still being published through Substack and are available at independentherald.substack.com. 

For more than 50 years, the Independent Herald has proudly served as the Voice of Scott County & Big South Fork Country. Technology and publication formats have changed, but the IH’s goals have not. We remain dedicated to the people and the communities we serve — highlighting the good and spotlighting opportunities for change, without fear or favor.