On Jan. 5, 1999, Chattanoogans woke up to a new name in news. From the University of Tennessee national football championship in 1999 to the election of the first African-American president in 2008, the Times Free Press has chronicled the events of the last decade. The cover stories that follow represent some of the biggest stories of the decade, 1999-2008.

When Jordan Leen won his first state championship his mom put the newspaper clippings in a scrapbook, and he tucked his medal away in a drawer.

Ruth Holmberg said selling her family’s newspaper 10 years ago was one of the most difficult business decisions she ever had to make.

When the former Chattanooga Times and Chattanooga News-Free Press were bought and merged by a new owner into one newspaper 10 years ago, the chief concern of our small editorial page staff — by then narrowed to two writers and an editorial cartoonist — was what would happen to The Times’ editorial page and public voice. Would the political and civic views long advocated on our page be lost? If not, how would they be incorporated into a new paper that, we had been told, would keep alive the institutional voices expressed on the editorial pages of both outgoing newspapers?

Chloe Morrison, reporter, on her first visit to the Times Free Press in 2003

In the last 10 years the Chattanooga area has produced more high school football All-Americans — five — and more state championship teams than during any previous decade. But the most memorable area prep players during that time didn’t earn any national acclaim or win a state title.

Jan. 5, 1999.

Note: Mark Kennedy and Chris Vass were editors on the front lines of the newspaper consolidation here in 1999. Mr. Kennedy was Sunday editor then, and Ms. Vass was the Metro editor.

It hardly seems possible that it has been a whole decade since the evening and Sunday Chattanooga Free Press and the morning and Sunday Chattanooga Times were combined to become the Chattanooga Times Free Press. But it was on Jan. 5, 1999, when that occurred.