After his death (1936) his son Ioannis Vellidis took over, and after the latter's death (1978) initially his wife Anna and since 1980 their daughter Katerina Vellidis. In the summer of 1996 the newspaper was closed due to debts, only to be re-launched in early 1998 by its new owner, businessman Yannis Raptopoulos. From the management of Macedonia, succeeding Konstantinos Dimadis - a historical figure for the journalistic family, who served as editor-in-chief and director for 62 years (1931-1993) - were the journalists Nikos Vourgountzis, Yannis Nikolopoulos, Lazaros Hadjinakos, etc.
Contributors to the newspaper, among others, were in the past: Dimitris Churmouzios, Dimitris Psathas, Kostis Palamas, Stratis Myrivilis, Georgios Vafopoulos, Archelaos, etc.
As early as the late 1960s, the newspaper began to establish an early form of a monotonic system, abolishing punctuation marks and replacing them with a tone, many years before monotonic was established as the official script of the Greek language.
Political position
Macedonia was one of the newspapers that significantly defined the processes of Thessaloniki's incorporation into the Greek state: its liberation in 1912 had found the newspaper already in circulation and with considerable influence on the city's affairs.
At first it did not join any of the existing parties, following an independent line, but from 1915 it began to side with Eleftherios Venizelos, remaining loyal to the "great democratic party" even after the Second World War and its republication after the closure imposed by Nazi agents.
After Venizelos' death, among his successors he decisively supported Georgios Papandreou, a friend of the Vellidis family.
In the post-civil war years, the newspaper had a strong anti-right-wing political stance and its articles were often dismissive of the then leader of the Greek Right, Konstantinos Karamanlis, continuing its support for Georgios Papandreou. With the post-independence period, however, its attitude changed, as it became a moderate newspaper of the centre-right, this time supporting Karamanlis, but with no direct party identification.
Makedonia was also the first Greek newspaper to appear online. A significant part of its historical archive is available electronically through the digital library of newspapers and periodicals of the National Library of Greece.
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