Company Profile

Company Description:

Cowles (pronounced “coles”) is a fourth generation family-owned enterprise that operates a portfolio of legacy companies and seeks to invest in high potential growth businesses for the long-term benefit of shareholders, customers, employees and the communities in which it operates.

The Company got its start in 1890, when William H. Cowles arrived in Spokane to be the business manager of The Spokesman, one of three local newspapers. He had been a reporter for The Chicago Tribune, where his father Alfred Cowles was the business manager.

During the panic of 1893, Cowles gained ownership of and merged The Spokesman and The Review. He purchased The Chronicle in 1897, thus consolidating ownership of the region’s three largest newspapers. Other print products owned by Cowles today are the Journal of Business and Nickels Worth (a north Idaho publication).