The Savannah Morning News made its debut on January 15, 1850 as the Daily Morning News. The name changed twice over the next 18 years. The paper went by the Daily News and Herald in 1865. The Savannah Daily Morning News lasted for one day on September 28, 1868. The next, day its current moniker was taken. The paper started publishing on Sundays in 1884. Four years later, the Morning News incorporated.

On November 19, 1891, The Savannah Press debuted with four pages under the ownership and editorship of Pleasant A. Stovall (who would later become President Woodrow Wilson's ambassador to Switzerland). The Savannah Press was the first successful evening product after a number of others failed. David Robinson, a local printer, was a partner in the original venture but was soon brought out by Stovall. In January 1931, the paper officially changed its name to the Savannah Evening Press.

On August 21, 1957 the two dailies are sold to banker Mills B. Lane Jr. and publisher Alvah H. Chapman (president and publisher). The corporation is known as Savannah News-Press Inc. Three years later, Lane and Chapman announced that they were selling the papers to William Shivers Morris Jr., publisher of The Augusta Chronicle and Herald and owner of Southeastern Newspapers. Soon after the sale, Chapman resigned and Southeastern took over.

Savannah Newspapers Inc. and Southeastern Newspapers merged into Southeastern Newspaper Corp. part of Morris Communications Corp on August 1, 1963, and three years later the first combined Sunday edition of the Savannah News-Press was printed.

In the summer of 1969, the staffs of the Morning News and Evening Press were merged.

The final issue of the Savannah Evening Press ran on October 31, 1996. The next day marked the debut of the "new and improved" Savannah Morning News, featuring a new logo and the return to the "Light of the Coastal Empire and Lowcountry" motto.